Traveling serial killers accounted for a majority of the victimizations

3 Victimization in the United States: An Overview

CHAPTER OUTLINE Crime in the Streets: The Big Picture

The Use and Abuse of Statistics Making Sense of Statistics

The Two Official Sources of Victimization Data

A First Glance at the Big Picture: Estimates of the Number of New Crime Victims per Year

A Second Glance at the Big Picture: Looking at the FBI’s Crime Clock

Taking Another Glance at the Big Picture: Looking at Victimization Rates

Focusing on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report

Focusing on the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)

Comparing the UCR and the NCVS Tapping into the UCR and the NCVS to Fill in the Details of the Big Picture

Searching for Changes in the Big Picture: Detecting Trends in Interpersonal Violence and Theft

Taking a Global View: Making International Comparisons

Putting Crime into Perspective: The Chances of Dying Violently—or From Other Causes

Summary

Key Terms Defined in the Glossary

Questions for Discussion and Debate

Critical Thinking Questions

Suggested Research Projects

LEARNING OBJECTIVES To find out what information about crime victims is

collected routinely by the federal government’s Department of Justice.

To become familiar with the ways that victimologists use this data to estimate how many people were harmed by criminal activities and what injuries and losses they suffered.

To become aware of the kinds of information about victims that can be found in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report.

continued

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CRIME IN THE STREETS: THE BIG PICTURE

Victimologists gather and interpret data to answer questions such as: How many people are harmed by criminals each year? How rapidly are the ranks of people who have suffered misfortunes growing? And, a matter of particular concern, which groups are targeted the most and the least often? Research- ers want to find out where and when the majority of crimes occur, whether predators on the prowl intimidate and subjugate their prey with their bare hands or use weapons, and if so, what kinds? Victi- mologists also want to determine whether indivi- duals are attacked by complete strangers or people they know, and how these intended targets act when confronted by assailants. What proportion

try to escape or fight back, how many are injured, what percentage need to be hospitalized, and how much money do they typically lose in an incident?

The answers to basic questions like these, when taken together, constitute what can be termed the big picture—an overview of what is really happen- ing across the United States during the twenty-first century. The big picture serves as an antidote to impressions based on direct but limited personal experiences, as well as self-serving reports circulated by organizations with vested interests, misleading media images, crude stereotypes, and widely held myths. But putting together the big picture is not easy. Compiling an accurate portrayal requires careful planning, formulation of the right questions, proper data-collection techniques, and insightful analyses.

Until the 1970s, few efforts were made to rou- tinely monitor and systematically measure various indicators of a victim’s plight. By the 1980s, a great many social scientists and agencies were con- ducting the research needed to bring the big picture into focus. Also, all sorts of special-interest groups began keeping count and disseminating their own estimates about the suffering of a wide variety of victims, including youngsters wounded at school, college students hurt or killed on campus, children reported missing by their parents, and people sin- gled out by assailants who hate their “kind.”

The statistics presented in this chapter come from official sources and shed light on the big pic- ture concerning “street crimes” involving violence and theft.

The Use and Abuse of Statistics

Statistics are meaningful numbers that reveal important information. Statistics are of crucial importance to social scientists, policy analysts, and decision makers because they replace vague adjec- tives such as “many,” “most,” and “few”with precise numbers. Both criminologists and victimologists gather their own data tomake their own calculations, or they scrutinize official statistics compiled and published by government agencies. By collecting, computing, and analyzing statistics, victimologists can derive answers to the intriguing research

LEARNING OBJECTIVES continued

To become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of this source of official statistics.

To learn how the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System is increasing the amount of information drawn from police files that is made public about victims.

To discover what data about victims and their plight can be found in the federal government’s alternative source of information, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey.

To become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of this alternative source of government statistics.

To learn how to interpret official statistics to determine how many persons were harmed by offenders in a single year.

To see how official statistics can be used to indicate trends, and especially whether the problem of criminal victimization has been intensifying or diminishing over recent decades.

To uncover which countries and which cities across the globe have the highest and lowest homicide rates.

To appreciate the complications of making international comparisons.

To be able to weigh the threat of crime against other perils by understanding comparative risks.

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questions they must tackle. Accurate statistics about crimes and victims are vital because they can shed light on a number of important matters: ■ Statistics can be calculated to estimate

victimization rates, which are realistic assessments of threat levels that criminal activ- ities pose to particular individuals and groups. What are the chances or odds various categories of people face of getting harmed during a cer- tain time period, such as a year, or even over an entire lifetime? Counts (such as death tolls), or better yet, rates (per 100,000 people per year) can provide answers to these disturbing questions. When “crime rates” measure the misfortunes of individuals (and other members of their households, or their homes and other possessions) but don’t also count enterprises, organizations, and agencies, then they are the same as victimization rates.

■ Statistics can expose patterns of criminal activity. Patterns reflect predictable relationships or regular occurrences that show up during an analysis of the data. For instance, a search for patterns could answer these questions: Do murders generally occur at a higher rate in urban neighborhoods than in suburban and rural areas? Also, is homicide a bigger problem in the South year after year than in other regions of the country? Are robberies com- mitted more often at certain locations than others, and more often against men than women?

■ Statistical trends can demonstrate how situa- tions have changed as time goes by. Is the burden of crime intensifying or subsiding as years pass? Are the dangers of getting killed by robbers increasing or decreasing with each successive year?

■ Statistics can provide estimates of the costs and losses imposed by illegal behavior. For exam- ple, insurance companies can determine what premiums to charge their customers based on actuarial calculations of the typical financial expenses suffered by motorists whose cars are stolen.

■ Statistics can be used for planning purposes to project a rough or “ballpark figure” of how many people are likely to need assistance in the immediate future. Law enforcement agencies, service providers, and insurance companies can anticipate the approximate size of their caseloads for the following year if they know how many people were harmed the previous year.

■ Statistics also can be computed to evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice operations, and to assess the usefulness of recovery efforts and prevention strategies. Are battered women likely to lead safer lives after their violent mates are arrested? How well are police departments doing in returning stolen property to burglar- ized households? Does installing a car alarm with a flashing red warning light really deter thieves?

■ Finally, statistical profiles can be assembled to yield an impression of what is usual or typical about a victim in terms of characteristics such as sex, age, and race/ethnicity. For example, is there any truth in the stereotype that most of the people who die violently are young men from troubled families living in poverty-stricken, big- city neighborhoods? Statistical portraits can also provide a reality check to help ground theories that purport to explain why some groups experience higher rates of predation than others. For example, if it turns out that the frail elderly are robbed less often than teenagers, then a theory that emphasizes the physical vulnerability of robbers’ targets will be off-base or incomplete as an explanation of which groups suffer the most, and why.

Making Sense of Statistics

Statistics never speak for themselves. Sometimes it’s difficult to make sense of statistics. The same num- bers can be interpreted quite differently, depending on what spin commentators give them—what is stressed and what is downplayed. Cynics joke that statistics can be used by a special interest group just like a lamppost is used by a drunkard—for support

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rather than for illumination. Consider the following example that illustrates this contention.

Vice President Joseph Biden delivers a speech at a rally, urging the U.S. Senate to pass President Barack Obama’s job creation bill. He asserts that because of police layoffs, “murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up” in many cities. (Pear, 2011)

This claim became highly politicized and sparked considerable controversy. Fact checkers challenged some of the statistics about whether cer- tain cities that had cut the size of their police forces because of budget problems actually experienced substantial increases in their local crime rates. Republican opponents condemned the remarks as fear mongering: support the Democrat’s plan or else the public will suffer higher victimization rates (see Kessler, 2011). But other reactions to this assertion are also possible. Staunch liberals could point out that to propose spending limited tax revenues on more police rather than on policies to improve the social conditions that breed street crime is usu- ally a conservative, Republican approach to the problem. Criminologists and victimologists could question the two main premises: that crime rates were rising in many cities (see below) during the years 2008–2011; and that a strong statistical rela- tionship had been established by researchers over recent decades that hiring more officers always had the desired result of reducing the number of crimes committed, and conversely, that cutting the size of the police force always led to a resur- gence in criminal activity.

Officials, agencies, and organizations with their own particular agendas may selectively release statis- tics to influence decision makers or shape public opinion. For example, law enforcement agencies might circulate alarming figures at budget hearings to support their arguments that they need more money for personnel and equipment to better protect and serve the community. Or these same agencies might cite declining numbers of victimizations to reduce fears and to take credit for improving public safety. Their argument could be that those in charge are doing their jobs well, such as tracking down

murderers or preventing robberies. Their opponents will try to make the contrary point by citing data that seems to indicate that the crime problem is getting worse and that the incumbents are incompetent and need to be replaced. Statistics also might serve as evi- dence to argue that existing laws and policies are hav- ing the intended desirable effects or, conversely, to persuade people that the old methods are not work- ing and new approaches are necessary.

Interpretations of mathematical findings can be given a spin that may be debatable—for example, emphasizing that a shelter for battered women is “half empty” rather than “half full,” or stressing how much public safety has improved, as opposed to how much more progress is needed before street crime can be considered under control. As useful and necessary as statistics are, they should always be viewed with a healthy dose of scientific skepticism.

Although some mistakes are honest and unavoidable, it is easy to “lie” with statistics by using impressive and scientific-sounding numbers to manipulate or mislead. Whenever statistics are presented to underscore or clinch some point in an argument, their origin and interpretation must be questioned, and certain methodological issues must be raised. What was the origin of the data, and does this source have a vested interest in shaping public opinion? Are different estimates available from other sources? What kinds of biases and inaccuracies could have crept into the collection and analysis of the data? How valid and precise were the measurements? How were key variables defined and measured (“operationalized”)? What was counted and what was excluded in the indicators, and why?

For example, officials inNewYork like to attract tourists by pointing out that it is the safest big city in America. That claim has been true since the late 1990s (see Karmen, 2000) and even was accurate for 2001 because the terrible death toll from the September 11 terrorist attacks on theWorld Trade Center, in which more than 2,700 people perished, was not counted by the FBI in its official calculation of New York City’s murder rate (evidently, its rate of “ordinary” mur- ders). However, the body count of 168 deaths result- ing from the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by homegrown terrorists in 1995 was added

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to the number of “ordinary” homicides that year, making it look like that urban area was an exception- ally dangerous place. To make definitional matters even more complicated (and inconsistent), the six people who were killed from a blast in the under- ground garage in the first terrorist attack on the WorldTradeCenter in 1993were counted asmurder victims by the FBI.

Victimologists committed to objectivity try to gather and interpret statistics without injecting any particular “spin” into their conclusions because (it is hoped) they have no “axe to grind” other than enlightening people about myths and realities sur- rounding the crime problem.

THE TWO OFFICIAL SOURCES OF VICTIMIZATION DATA

As early as the 1800s, public officials began keeping records about lawbreaking to gauge the “moral health” of society. Then, as now, high rates of interpersonal violence and theft were taken as signs of social pathology—indications that some- thing was desperately wrong with the way many people interacted. Annual data sets were compiled to determine whether illegal activities were being brought under control as time passed. Monitoring trends is even more important today because many innovative but intrusive and expensive criminal jus- tice policies intended to curb crime have been implemented.

Two government reports published each year contain statistical data that enable victimologists to keep track of trends. The Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR): Crime in the United States is a massive compilation of all inci- dents “known” to local, county, and state police departments across the country. The FBI’s UCR is a virtual “bible” of crime statistics based on victims’ complaints and direct observations made by officers. It is older and better known than the other official source, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): Criminal Victimization in the United States. The BJS’s NCVS is a projection of grand totals for various

areas and for the entire country based on incidents voluntarily disclosed to interviewers by a sample of victims. Both of these official sources of facts and figures are disseminated each year by the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Each of these government data-collection systems has its own strengths and weaknesses in terms of providing the information victimologists are seeking to answer their key questions.

A First Glance at the Big Picture: Estimates of the Number of New Crime Victims per Year

To start to bring the big picture in focus, a first step would be to look up how many Americans reveal that they were victims of street crimes each year. The absolute numbers are staggering. According to the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR) about Crime in the United States, nearly 1.25 million acts of “violence against persons” took place during 2010. In addition, over 9 million thefts were reported to the police (however, some were carried out against stores or offices, not individuals or families). According to the yearly National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), Criminal Victimization in the United States, the situation was even worse: the survey projected that people 12 years old and over suffered an esti- mated 3.8 million acts of violence, and households experienced close to 15 million thefts during 2010. Obviously, each year, huge numbers of Americans join the ranks of those who know what it is like from firsthand experience to endure crime-inflicted injuries and losses.

A Second Glance at the Big Picture: Looking at the FBI’s Crime Clock

Consider another set of statistics intended to summa- rize the big picture that are issued yearly by the FBI in its authoritative UCR. This set is called the “Crime Clock,” and it dramatizes the fact that as time passes— each and every second, minute, hour, and day—the toll keepsmounting, asmore andmore people join the ranks of crime victims (see Figure 3.1).

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The Crime Clock’s statistics are calculated in a straightforward manner. The total number of inci- dents of each kind of crime that were reported to all the nation’s 18,000 plus police departments is divided into the number of seconds (60 × 60 × 24 × 365 = 31,536,000) or minutes (60 × 24 × 365 = 525,600) in a year. For instance, about 14,750 people were slain in the United States in 2010. The calculation (525,600/14,750 = 36) indicates that one American was murdered that year about every 36 minutes (FBI, 2011).

Just a glance at this chart alerts even the casual reader to its chilling message. The big picture it por- trays is that crimes of violence (one every 25 seconds) and theft (one every 4 seconds) are all too common. As the Crime Clock ticks away, a stream of casualties

flows into morgues, hospital emergency rooms, and police stations throughout the nation. At practically every moment, someone somewhere in the United States is experiencing what it feels like to be harmed by a criminal. These grim reminders give the impres- sion that becoming a victim someday is virtually inev- itable. It seems to be just a matter of time before one’s “number is called” and disaster strikes. Sooner or later, it will be every American’s “turn”—or so it appears.

Furthermore, it can be argued that these alarming figures revealed by the Crime Clock are actually underestimates of how dangerous the streets of the United States really are, due to a shortcoming in the Bureau’s methodology. The big picture is much worse. The FBI’s calculations are based solely upon crimes known to police forces across the country.

One murder

every 36 minutes

One forcible rape

every 6 minutes

One robbery

every 84 seconds

One burglary

every 15 seconds

One larceny-theft

every 5 seconds

One motor vehicle theft

every 43 seconds

One aggravated assault

every 41 seconds

One violent crime

every 25 seconds

One crime index offense

every 4 seconds

One property crime every 4 seconds

60

30

55 5

35 25

50 10

40 20

45 15

F I G U R E 3.1 The FBI’s Crime Clock, 2010 SOURCE: The FBI’s Crime Clock, 2010.

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But not all illegal acts are known to the authorities. The police find out about only a fraction of all the incidents of violence and an even smaller proportion of the thefts that occur because many victims do not share their personal troubles with the uniformed officers or detectives of their local police departments. The reporting rate varies from crime to crime, place to place, year to year, and group to group (see Chapter 6 for more on victim reporting rates). Hence, one way to look at these Crime Clock statistics is to assume that they represent the tip of the iceberg: the actual number of people harmed by offenders in these various ways must be considerably higher.

However, the FBI offers a disclaimer: “The Crime Clock should be viewed with care. The most aggregate representation of UCR data, it con- veys the annual reported crime experience by show- ing a relative frequency of occurrence of the Part I index offenses. It should not be taken to imply a regularity in the commission of crime. The Crime Clock represents the annual ratio of crime to fixed time intervals” (FBI, 2005, p. 44). In other words, the reader is being reminded that in reality, the num- ber of offenses carried out by lawbreakers ebbs and flows, varying with the time of day, day of the week, and season. These Crime Clock numbers represent projections over the course of an entire year and not the actual timing of the attacks. These street crimes do not take place with such rigid predictability.

The Crime Clock mode of presentation—which has appeared in the UCR for decades—has inherent shock value because as it ticks away, the future seems so ominous. It lends itself to media sensationalism, fear-mongering political campaigns, and marketing ploys. Heightened anxieties can be exploited to garner votes and to boost the sales of burglar alarms, automo- bile antitheft devices, or crime insurance. The public can be frightened into thinking they may be next and that their time is nearly up—if they haven’t already suffered in some manner at least once.

Taking Another Glance at the Big Picture: Looking at Victimization Rates

Statistics always must be scrutinized carefully, double-checked, and then put into context.

The UCR could offer another disclaimer—but doesn’t—that the Crime Clock’s figures are unnec- essarily alarming because they lack an important measurement of risk—the recognition that there are millions of potential targets throughout the nation. The ticking away of the Crime Clock is an unduly frightening way of depicting the big pic- ture because it uses seconds, minutes, hours, or days as the denominator of the fraction. An alternative formulation could be used in the calculation: one that places the reported number of victimizations in the numerator of the fraction and the (huge) num- ber of people or possessions who are in danger of being targeted into the denominator. Because there are so many hundreds of millions of residents, homes, and automobiles that could be selected by predators on the prowl, the actual chances of any given individual getting targeted during the course of a year may not be so high or so worrisome at all.

This alternative calculation—using a different, bigger denominator, “per 100,000 persons per year”—can yield a very different impression. In fact, the UCR does present these “crime rates”—which also could be called “victimization rates”—right after the Crime Clock in every yearly report. It seems to make a world of difference in terms of context. The implicit message when rates are calculated is almost the opposite: Don’t worry so much about being targeted. These misfortunes will probably burden someone else.

Indeed, the UCR’s yearly findings seem rela- tively reassuring, suggesting that the odds of being harmed are not at all as ominous as the Crime Clock implies. For example, the Crime Clock warned that a robbery took place about every 84 seconds during 2010. That understandably sounds frightening because robbery is the street crime people worry about the most. However, when the UCR findings are presented with a huge denominator as a rate (per 100,000 persons per year), the figure seems less worrisome. For every 100,000 Americans, “only” 119 were robbed during 2010. Another way of expressing that same rate is that 99,881 out of every 100,000 persons made it through the year without being accosted. Put another way, only about 0.12 percent (far less than 1 percent) of the public

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complained to the police that they had been robbed that year (remember, however, that not all robberies are reported; also, some individuals face much higher or much lower risks of being targeted, as will be explained in Chapter 4).

Victimization rates also are computed and dis- seminated by another branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, the BJS. Its estimates about the chances of being harmed come from a different source—not police files, but a nationwide survey of the population: theNCVS.The survey’s findings are presented as rates per 1,000 persons per year (in contrast to the UCR’s per 100,000 per year; to compare the two sets of sta- tistics, just move the decimal point two places to the right) for violent crimes, and per 1,000 households per year for property crimes. The NCVS’s findings indi- cated that 2 out of every 1,000 residents age 12 and over in theUnited States (or 0.2 percent) were robbed during 2010. (This estimate is substantially greater than the UCR figure because it includes those inci- dents that were not reported to the police but were disclosed to the interviewers.) Furthermore, the NCVS supplies some reassuring details that are not available from theUCR: the victimwas not physically injured in about two-thirds of the confrontations. An additional bit of good news was that victims did not lose anything of value to robbers in about one-quarter of the hostile encounters (no possessions were stolen or damaged). Accentuating the positive, despite wide- spread public concern, for every 1,000 residents of the United States (over the age of 11) 998 were never confronted, 999 were not wounded, and 999 did not suffer any financial losses from the robberies (the latest figures available are for 2008) (BJS, 2011).

In sum, two sources of data—the UCR and the NCVS—published by agencies in the federal gov- ernment are reasonably accurate and trustworthy. What differs is the way the statistics are collected and presented. Each format lends itself to a particular interpretation or spin. The UCR’s Crime Clock cal- culations focus on the number of persons harmed per hour, minute, or even second. But stripped of con- text, these figures are unduly alarming because they give the impression that being targeted is common- place. They ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans went about their daily lives

throughout the year without interference from crim- inals. The rates per 100,000 published in the UCR and per 1,000 in theNCVS juxtapose the small num- bers who were preyed upon against the huge num- bers who got away unscathed in any given year. This mode of presenting the same facts yields a very dif- ferent impression: a rather reassuring message that being targeted is a relatively unusual event.

Focusing on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report

The UCRwas established in 1927 by a committee set up by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The goal was to develop a uniform set of defi- nitions and reporting formats for gathering crime sta- tistics. Since 1930, the FBI has published crime data in the UCR that was forwarded voluntarily by police departments across the United States. In recent years, more than 18,000 village, town, tribal, college, municipal, county, and state police departments and sheriff’s departments in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and several territories that serve about 97 percent of the more than 300 million inhabitants of the United States participate in the data collection process, usually via state criminal justice clearing- houses. Several federal law enforcement agencies now contribute data as well (FBI, 2011).