Victims and Offenders in Two Crime Statistics Programs

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In the article Victims and Offenders in Two Crime Statistics Programs: A Comparison of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), (herein after NCVS and NIBRS will be called “systems” when referencing the statistics of the nature of the crimes), the comparison of the two reporting systems for crimes are similar. These two reporting systems are a visual representation of the crimes that are reported. They do not account for crimes that are not reporting or crimes that are reported after the date. They report crime only when there is an official report, such as one by the officer that comes to the scene of the crime to take statements from the individuals. NCVS and NIBRS are only report burglary, larceny, aggravated assault, and vehicle theft. They do not report on more serious crimes such as rape or murder.
Every report was different for males and females. Males where committing more crimes than female in every category mentioned above for offenders. Aggravated assault victims had more male than female. The crimes where committed against males more than females. This was reported by both systems noting that males where victimized more than females. Robbery was the same way noting that males were victimized more than females.
Larceny and vehicle theft on both systems display white people has have being the must victimized out the other races. This includes white males and white females. This is broke down to head of household.
The two systems are a good representation of crime through statistics of race and the actual crime. Through NCVS, the FBI crime system NIBRS can conduct a trend analysis for the crimes and the victims that are affected by the crimes. This can also serve as a tool to higher more police to the areas that are affected more with crime. The article; The Relationship Between Crime Reporting and Police: Implications for the Use of Uniform Crime Reports, Steven Levit, discusses the problem with police reporting and how there is no standard for the reporting across the nation. Therefore people believe that the reports are not accurate due to how different police organizations conduct their investigations. In this article, the author discusses estimates for crime versus city. The author is working with Craig who introduced this way of thought and idea in 1987.

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