Consider the opening story about the super-predator myth. That is a significant example of misuse of crime statistics and data to tell a story that is factually inaccurate. DiLulio (1995) argued in his article that the only way to protect our society from this forthcoming generation of super-predators was to get families back into religion. Perhaps his motive was to proselytize. The media also picked up this story and it spread like wildfire, scaring the nation. Perhaps it is all because of the media trope, “If it bleeds, it leads” meaning they get more viewers if their stories are scary. In whatever manner it spread, this misuse of data has led to tough-on-crime sentencing against children in this country. Consider these statistics and remember that when data is misused, it can have grave consequences: Those as young as ten years old can be tried in adult court, “10,000 children are housed in adult jails and prisons on any given day in America; and nearly 3000 American children have been sentenced to die in prison” (Equal Justice Initiative, 2014).

2.5.4 Summary

Knowing how much crime is happening, what type of crime, where, by whom, and to whom is all important data that needs to be tracked if we are to be able to determine what is or is not working. There are two main sources for crime data in the United States: the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is the largest, most commonly used data currently available on crime. The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) was created in the 1980s to improve the overall quality of crime data collected by law enforcement in the UCR. The Hate Crimes Statistics Data Collection tracks the offense type, location, bias motivation, victim type, number of individual victims, number of offenders, and the race of the offenders. Not all crime gets reported to law enforcement. The missing data is the dark figure of crime. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is the main source of information on criminal victimization in the United States. It is important to be aware and to consider the possible motives behind the source sharing crime statistics to determine the validity or accuracy and trustworthiness of the data.

2.5.5 Resources

• Read the original article that launched the super-predator myth, “The Coming of the Super-Predators” in The Weekly Standard. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/the-coming-of-the-super-predators
• The New York Times reports on the lasting impact of the super-predator myth in this Retro Report on YouTube called “The Superpredator Scare.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YidALyBwat0&t=2s