Examine the past 10 years of crime data in the UCR and the NCVS located in the Learning Resources.

Virtually everything known about crime and criminal justice is generated from data analysis and research. Data analysis and research are used in law enforcement to determine the most effective strategies for combating crime, in the court system to examine the effects of sentencing, and in the correctional system to develop new ways to reduce recidivism. Regardless of the part of the criminal justice system in which you are currently involved or will become involved, you must understand and become familiar with the resources and strategies for this analysis to aid in planning and decision making.

The two main sources of crime and victimology data in the United States are the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) databases. For this Assessment, you will analyze the data and associated reports for crime trends. You will also examine the strengths and weaknesses of these data sources and consider conclusions based on the data within the context of data, research, and theory from other professional and scholarly resources.

The Assessment:

(Complete using template/rubric provided.) please see attachment/template must be complete as well

Examine the past 10 years of crime data in the UCR and the NCVS located in the Learning Resources. Identify three crime trends from the data (2–4 paragraphs). (please see attachment)

Examine the past 10 years of crime data in the UCR and the NCVS located in the Learning Resources. Identify three crime trends from the data (2–4 paragraphs).

What criminological explanations for your identified crime trends can be derived from the UCR and/or NCVS databases? Describe at least two. Then provide an argument for other factors and variables (biological, social, structural, economic, etc.) that cause or influence your identified crime trends that are not present in the UCR/NCVS data. Reference theoretical and scholarly resources that support your criminological explanations (3–5 paragraphs).

Data Collection: National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

Status: Active

Frequency: Ongoing from 1973

Latest data available: 2017

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is the nation’s primary source of information on criminal victimization. Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 interviews on criminal victimization, involving 160,000 unique persons in about 95,000 households. Persons are interviewed on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States. The NCVS collects information on nonfatal personal crimes (i.e., rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and personal larceny) and household property crimes (i.e., burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other theft) both reported and not reported to police. Survey respondents provide information about themselves (e.g., age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, marital status, education level, and income) and whether they experienced a victimization. For each victimization incident, the NCVS collects information about the offender (e.g., age, race and Hispanic origin, sex, and victim-offender relationship), characteristics of the crime (e.g., time and place of occurrence, use of weapons, nature of injury, and economic consequences), whether the crime was reported to police, reasons the crime was or was not reported, and victim experiences with the criminal justice system.

Methodology

Methodology

Survey coverage

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is an annual data collection conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).  Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 interviews on criminal victimization, involving 160,000 unique persons in about 95, 000 households.  Persons are interviewed on the frequency, characteristics, and consequences of criminal victimization in the United States. The NCVS collects information on nonfatal personal crimes (i.e., rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and personal larceny) and household property crimes (i.e., burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other theft) both reported and not reported to police. In addition to providing annual level and change estimates on criminal victimization, the NCVS is the primary source of information on the nature of criminal victimization incidents.

Survey respondents provide information about themselves (e.g., age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, marital status, education level, and income) and whether they experienced a victimization. The NCVS collects information for each victimization incident about the offender (e.g., age, race and Hispanic origin, sex, and victim-offender relationship), characteristics of the crime (e.g., time and place of occurrence, use of weapons, nature of injury, and economic consequences), whether the crime was reported to police, reasons the crime was or was not reported, and victim experiences with the criminal justice system.

The NCVS is administered to persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of households in the United States. The NCVS defines a household as a group of persons who all reside at a sampled address. Persons are considered household members when the sampled address is their usual place of residence at the time of the interview and when they have no usual place of residence elsewhere. Once selected, households remain in the sample for 3½ years, and eligible persons in these households are interviewed every 6 months, either in person or over the phone, for a total of seven interviews.

First interviews are typically conducted in person with subsequent interviews conducted either in person or by phone. New households rotate into the sample on an ongoing basis to replace outgoing households that have been in the sample for the 3½-year period. The sample includes persons living in group quarters (e.g., dormitories, rooming houses, and religious group dwellings) and excludes persons living on military bases and in institutional settings (e.g., correctional or hospital facilities) and persons who are homeless.

Nonresponse and weighting adjustments

The 2017 NCVS data file includes 145,508 household interviews. Overall, 76% of eligible households completed an interview. Within participating households, there were 239,541 personal interviews in 2017, representing an 84% response rate among eligible persons from responding households. Victimizations that occurred outside of the United States were excluded from this report. In 2017, less than 1% of the unweighted victimizations occurred outside of the United States.

Estimates in NCVS reports generally use data from the 1993 to 2017 NCVS data files, weighted to produce annual estimates of victimization for persons age 12 or older living in U.S. households. Because the NCVS relies on a sample rather than a census of the entire U.S. population, weights are designed to adjust to known population totals and to compensate for survey nonresponse and other aspects of the sample design.

NCVS data files include person, household, victimization, and incident weights. Person weights provide an estimate of the population represented by each person in the sample. Household weights provide an estimate of the U.S. household population represented by each household in the sample. After proper adjustment, both household and person weights are also typically used to form the denominator in calculations of crime rates. For personal crimes, the incident weight is derived by dividing the person weight of a victim by the total number of persons victimized during an incident as reported by the respondent. For property crimes, the incident weight and the household weight are the same, because the victim of a property crime is considered to be the household as a whole. The incident weight is most frequently used to calculate estimates of the number of crimes committed against a particular class of victim.

Victimization weights used in these analyses account for the number of persons victimized during an incident and for high-frequency repeat victimizations (i.e., series victimizations). Series victimizations are similar in type but occur with such frequency that a victim is unable to recall each individual event or describe each event in detail. Survey procedures allow NCVS interviewers to identify and classify these similar victimizations as series victimizations and to collect detailed information on only the most recent incident in the series.

The weighting counts series victimizations as the actual number of victimizations reported by the victim, up to a maximum of 10. Doing so produces more reliable estimates of crime levels than only counting such victimizations once, while the cap at 10 minimizes the effect of extreme outliers on rates. According to the 2017 data, series incidents accounted for 1.3% of all victimizations and 3.0% of all violent victimizations. Additional information on the enumeration of series victimizations is detailed in the report Methods for Counting High-Frequency Repeat Victimizations in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCJ 237308, BJS web, April 2012).

Standard error computations

When national estimates are derived from a sample, as with the NCVS, caution must be used when comparing one estimate to another or when comparing estimates over time. Although one estimate may be larger than another, estimates based on a sample have some degree of sampling error. The sampling error of an estimate depends on several factors, including the amount of variation in the responses and the size of the sample. When the sampling error around an estimate is taken into account, estimates that appear different may not be statistically different.

One measure of the sampling error associated with an estimate is the standard error. The standard error may vary from one estimate to the next. Generally, an estimate with a small standard error provides a more reliable approximation of the true value than an estimate with a large standard error. Estimates with relatively larger standard errors are associated with less precision and reliability and should be interpreted with caution.

Generalized variance function (GVF) parameters and direct variance estimation methods were used to generate standard errors for each point estimate (e.g., counts, percentages, and rates) in this report. To generate standard errors around victimization and incidence estimates from the NCVS, the U.S. Census Bureau produces GVF parameters for BJS. To generate standard errors around prevalence estimates, BJS used direct variance estimation methods. The GVFs and direct variance estimation methods take into account aspects of the NCVS complex sample design and represent the curve fitted to a selection of individual standard errors based on the Balanced Repeated Replication (BRR) technique.

BJS conducted statistical tests to determine whether differences in estimated numbers, percentages, and rates in these reports were statistically significant once sampling error was taken into account. Using statistical analysis programs developed specifically for the NCVS, all comparisons in the text were tested for significance. The primary test procedure was the Student’s t-statistic, which tests the difference between two sample estimates. Unless otherwise noted, the findings described in these reports as higher, lower, or different passed a test at the 0.05 level of statistical significance (95% confidence level) or at the 0.10 level of significance (90% confidence level). Readers should reference figures and tables in these reports for testing on specific findings. Caution is required when comparing estimates not explicitly discussed in these reports.

Readers may use the estimates and standard errors of the estimates provided in these reports to generate a confidence interval around the estimate as a measure of the margin of error. The following example illustrates how standard errors may be used to generate confidence intervals:

Based on the 2017 NCVS, the violent victimization rate among persons age 12 or older in 2017 was 20.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons. Using the GVFs, BJS determined that the estimated victimization rate has a standard error of 1.03. A confidence interval around the estimate is generated by multiplying the standard error by ± 1.96 (the t-score of a normal, two-tailed distribution that excludes 2.5% at either end of the distribution). Therefore, the 95% confidence interval around the 20.6 estimate from 2017 is 20.6 ± (1.03 x 1.96) or (18.59 to 22.61). In other words, if BJS used the same sampling method to select different samples and computed an interval estimate for each sample, it would expect the true population parameter (rate of violent victimization) to fall within the interval estimates 95% of the time.

For these reports, BJS also calculated a coefficient of variation (CV) for all estimates, representing the ratio of the standard error to the estimate. CVs provide another measure of reliability and a means for comparing the precision of estimates across measures with differing levels or metrics.

The 2017 NCVS weights include a new adjustment to control household weights to independent housing unit totals available internally within the Census Bureau. This new adjustment was applied only to household weights for housing units and does not affect person weights. Historically, the household weights were controlled to independent totals of the person population. This new weighting adjustment improves upon the historical one and better aligns the number of estimated households in the NCVS with other Census household survey estimates.

Because of this new adjustment, the 2017 NCVS household estimate is about 8% lower than the 2016 NCVS household estimate. As a result, the property crime estimate, or the number of households affected by property crime, is also about 8% lower. When making comparisons of property crime changes between 2016 and 2017, data users should compare victimization rates between the two years that are unaffected by this change in weighting adjustment. Comparisons of the number of property crime victimizations between 2016 and 2017 are not appropriate due to the change in weighting methodology. For more information on weighting in the NCVS, see Non-response and weighting adjustments section and National Crime Victimization Survey, 2016 Technical Documentation (NCJ 251442, BJS web, December 2017).

Methodological changes to the NCVS in 2006

Methodological changes implemented in 2006, including the decennial sample redesign that also occurred in 2016, may have affected the crime estimates for that year to such an extent that they are not comparable to estimates from other years. Evaluation of 2007 through 2015 data from the NCVS conducted by BJS and the Census Bureau found a high degree of confidence that estimates for 2007 through 2015 are consistent with and comparable to estimates for 2005 and previous years.

    • Criminal Victimization, 2006 (NCJ 219413, December 2007)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2007 (NCJ 224390, December 2008)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2008 (NCJ 227777, September 2009)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2009 (NCJ 231327, October 2010)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2010 (NCJ 235508, September 2011)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2011 (NCJ 239437, October 2012)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2012 (NCJ 243389, October 2013)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2013 (NCJ 247648, September 2014)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2014 (NCJ 248973, August 2015)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2015 (NCJ 250180, October 2016)
    • Criminal Victimization, 2016: Revised (NCJ 252121, BJS web, October 2018).
    • Criminal Victimization, 2017 (NCJ 252472, December 2018).

NCVS revised 2016 estimates

To permit cross-year comparisons that were inhibited by the 2016 sample redesign, BJS created a revised data file. Estimates for 2016 are based on the revised file and replace previously published estimates. For more information, see Criminal Victimization, 2016: Revised (NCJ 252121, BJS web, October 2018).

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