Question

What is a dark figureof crime? What measures are used to attempt to determine how much crime really does exist in our society? Which of the two major national measures of crime (UCR or NCVS) does the best job? Which does the worst? Why?

Answer 1

• The dark figure of crime is a term that is used by crime experts and the sociologists to illustrate the number of committed crimes that are never reported or are never discovered and this puts into doubt the effectiveness and efficiency of the official crimes data. Among the crimes that take place in any given place at a given period of time, some of them are never reported to the police, and some are reported but never recorded by the police officers.
• Albert Biderman in his thesis has described Dark Figure in crime as an ‘occurrences that by some criteria are called crime yet that are not registered in the statistics of whatever agency was the source of the data being used.' In this situation, the sociologists define the difference between committed crimes and the reported and recorded crimes as the dark figure of crime.
• For a crime to be recorded there are three things that must be provided. One, a person must know that a crime has been committed. This means that the one who committed the crime must be aware, or must have been seen by someone else while committing the crime.
• Secondly, the crime must be reported to the relevant authorities either by the person who committed it or the one who has observed the crime being committed.
• Thirdly, the police or others to whom the crime has been reported must also accept that the act has been done against the law, or that law has been broken in the act. If one of the three fails, then the crime goes unrecognized.
• There are several methods for measuring the prevalence of crime. Public surveys are sometimes conducted to estimate the amount of crime not reported to police. Such surveys are usually more reliable for assessing trends. However, they also have their limitations and generally don't procure statistics useful for local crime prevention, often ignore offenses against children and do not count offenders brought before the criminal justice system.
• Two major methods for collecting crime data are law enforcement reports, which only reflect crimes that are reported, recorded, and not subsequently canceled; and victim study (victimization statistical surveys), which rely on individual memory and honesty. For less frequent crimes such as intentional homicide and armed robbery, reported incidences are generally more reliable, but suffer from under-recording.
• The U.S. has two major data collection programs, the Uniform Crime Reports from the FBI and the National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. However, the U.S. has no comprehensive infrastructure to monitor crime trends and report the information to related parties such as law enforcement.
• More complex measures involve measuring the numbers of discrete victims and offenders as well as repeat victimisation rates and recidivism. Repeat victimisation involves measuring how often the same victim is subjected to a repeat occurrence of an offence, often by the same offender. Repetition rate measures are often used to assess the effectiveness of interventions.
• Both the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) were designed to gather and report on the United State's national crime rates. While both have their limitations and therefore inaccuracies, one difference between the UCR and NCVS is that NCVS is far more likely to be inaccurate due to its methods of collecting data.
  
• The UCR main goal is to provide a reliable set of criminal justice stats for law enforcement. The NCVS is to be able provide unviable information about crime (even crime that has not been reported to the police), victims and the offenders. UCR are crimes reported to the police in most jurisdictions. The NCVS are both reported and unreported to police. Nation as a whole.
• Another difference is the collection method. The UCR collection method is the police and departments of the FBI an on the other hand the NCVS collects information by survey. The kinds of information for the UCR is quite different from the NCVS. The UCR is offense counts; crime clearances; person arrests and homicide victims. The NCVS kind of information is details about victims and the crimes committed. Reported use of weapons, injuries and economic effects.
• By understanding the strengths and limitations of each program, it is possible to use the UCR and NCVS to achieve a greater understanding of crime trends and the nature of crime in the United States. For example, changes in police procedures, shifting attitudes towards crime and police, and other societal changes can affect the extent to which people report and law enforcement agencies record crime. NCVS and UCR data can be used in concert to explore why trends in reported and police recorded crime may differ.