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9 - Explaining the Divergence Between UCR and NCVS Aggravated Assault Trends

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2009

By
Richard Rosenfeld
Edited by
James P. Lynch  and
Lynn A. Addington
Richard Rosenfeld
Affiliation:
Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri–St. Louis
James P. Lynch
Affiliation:
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York
Lynn A. Addington
Affiliation:
American University, Washington DC
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Summary

Trends in aggravated assaults recorded by the police and those reported in victim surveys diverge over time in the United States. Police-recorded assaults trend upward during the 1980s and flatten in the 1990s, whereas survey-estimated assaults are flat during the 1980s and decline during the 1990s. Previous research has attributed the divergence between the police and survey trends to changes in police recording practices, independent of the underlying rate of victimization (Blumstein, 1998; O'Brien, 1996). This study adds to that research by comparing police and survey trends in firearm and nonfirearm aggravated assaults, on the assumption that police recording practices are more likely to affect the latter than the former. Consistent with this assumption, the results show much less divergence in gun than nongun assault time trends. Together with previous research, this study offers strong, albeit circumstantial, evidence that changes in police recording of assaults explain much of the divergence in aggravated assault trends derived from police records and victim surveys. It also appears that the NCVS redesign has helped to reduce the divergence between UCR and NCVS aggravated assault trends in recent years.

BACKGROUND AND SIGNIFICANCE

Although the United States' two major crime indicators, the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), are based on distinct methods of obtaining information about the number and nature of criminal events, they should tell essentially the same story about changes in crime rates over time.

Type
Chapter
Information
Understanding Crime Statistics
Revisiting the Divergence of the NCVS and the UCR
 , pp. 251 - 268
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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