Toward a 21st Century National Data Infrastructure: Enhancing Survey Programs by Using Multiple Data Sources (2023) / Chapter Skim
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7 Combining Multiple Data Sources to Measure Crime
7 Combining Multiple Data Sources to Measure Crime
Pages 141-166
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Program administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) , which compiles data from law enforcement agencies.
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NOTE: This table gives the classification under the idealized UCR in which all law enforcement agencies submit data to the FBI. aHanson (2021)
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Section 7.3 outlines other national data collections about crime, and Section 7.4 explores the potential for obtaining more timely crime statistics directly from police department databases and websites. Sections 7.5 and 7.6 describe some initiatives for combining data sources to study crime, and Section 7.7 discusses possible future directions for u sing multiple sources to improve the quality and equity of data about crime.
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crime statistics enterprise is critical. There is currently no entity responsible 7.1 THE UNIFORM CRIME REPORTING PROGRAM The UCR Program combines data voluntarily submitted by states and law enforcement agencies and has thus relied on multiple data sources since its inception in 1930.
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crime statistics enterprise -- including the "new" crime categories -- and then establish such a structure. The structure must ensure that all of the component functions of generating crime statistics are conducted in concordance with the sensibilities, principles, and practices of a statistical agency.
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Through 2020, the FBI encouraged NIBRS submission but allowed law enforcement agencies and state UCR programs to report UCR data in either SRS or NIBRS format; NIBRS data were converted to SRS format to compute national statistics for the amount of Part I crime. Beginning in 2021, SRS data were no longer accepted.
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Estimation Data reviewed for quality and National crime statistics estimated procedure outlier detection. Imputation of using statistical models.
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The agencies submitting NIBRS data in 2021 were essentially a convenience sample from the population of law enforcement agencies.4 The FBI 3 Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov and Barnett-Ryan and Berzofsky (2022)
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ased estimates of crime: the agencies that were already submitting NIBRS data in 2011 would represent themselves, and the probability sample of 400 agencies would represent the rest of the population. As of August 2021, however, only 210 of the 400 agencies in the probability sample were certified for the NIBRS program (https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/ files/media/document/NCS-X_Sample_Agencies.pdf)
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, and more research is needed on the uniformity and accuracy of these measures. The panel anticipates that some of these challenges will be resolved as more law enforcement agencies submit NIBRS data.
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In addition, alternative data sources could be used to address some of the challenges in producing accurate crime estimates. Possible paths include using data obtained directly from police departments to impute crime statistics for nonparticipating law enforcement agencies or to study measurement quality (see Sections 7.4 and 7.6)
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. These models predicted a state's NCVS crime counts from state-level crime counts from the UCR Program, along 9 Violent crimes include rape and sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple (non-aggravated)
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. Small area estimates represent one promising arena for combining data sources to obtain more detailed information about crime (see Section 7.5 for other potential methods for combining statistics at the area level to enhance the value of crime statistics)
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For example, in 2011, the estimated number of rape and sexual assault victimizations from the NCVS was 244,190; the estimated number of rape victims from the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey was 1,929,000 -- nearly eight times larger (U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2016, p.
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Most large police departments post crime statistics on their websites; some update the statistics daily. Websites of the New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago Police Departments, for example, provide up-to-date maps and statistics on crimes in city neighborhoods.
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in an imputation model may be helpful for improving accuracy of national NIBRS statistics. 7.5 COMBINING STATISTICS COMPUTED FROM MULTIPLE DATA SOURCES Social science researchers have linked statistics calculated from UCR program data or from local police departments to area-level statistics calculated from the census or ACS to investigate factors associated with higher crime rates.
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Past comparisons of UCR and NCVS data have involved national statistics -- for example, Morgan and Thompson (2021) compared the rate of crime reported to the police in the UCR and the NCVS for rape and sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft.
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Resolving such differences and aligning definitions may help improve the quality of crime statistics. A second challenge in linking NIBRS or police department data at the area level involves geographic alignment of areas covered by law enforcement agencies.
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NIBRS and police department data could potentially be linked by location, incident, victim, or offender. The NCVS has some capacity for longitudinal linkage of persons or households through its panel survey design; survey participants could potentially be linked with other data sources such as the National Death Index.15 The focus of this chapter is on using multiple data sources to measure crime, but it is important to note that many researchers have linked data sources to study arrest and prosecution, correctional populations, and recidivism.
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The investigators developed "linkages between those kits that were invento ried and the sexual assault incidents that were reported or supposed to be reported" in NIBRS, and used that information to identify ways the state Department of Justice could "educate law enforcement agencies on […] reporting sexual assaults." Some individual police departments link multiple data sources, some times in conjunction with artificial intelligence algorithms, to allocate law en forcement resources or predict where crime is likely to occur.
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for subpopulations because it did not collect information about the circumstances of the crimes. NIBRS data have more information on demographics and circumstances, but data from many law enforcement agencies are missing from the FBI statistics.
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. But, for crimes without a known bias motivation, NIBRS does not collect information on the sexual orientation or disability status of the victim, so NIBRS data by themselves cannot give estimates of crimes against the LGBTQIA+ population or against persons with disabilities.
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For crime, however, one of the two major data sources is itself a blending of data contributed by states and individual law enforcement agencies. In that respect, the UCR Program resembles the NVSS (see Section 4.3)
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Longer-term activities, however, which may include a more fundamental consideration of some of the alternative data sources described in Sections 7.3 and 7.4, will require a different approach. The National Academies' reports on Modernizing Crime Statistics concluded that con tinued improvement in crime statistics will require "enhancements to and expansions of the current data collections, as well as new data collection systems" (NASEM, 2018, p.
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Profiting from these data sources, however, will require investment in data infrastructure, personnel, and statistical methods for working with the data sources, as well as a structure for coordinating data collection across agencies. CONCLUSION 7-2: Improving crime statistics will require coordina tion of the National Crime Victimization Survey and Uniform Crime Reporting Program with new data sources that can provide timely and detailed information about crimes, including those measured in the current classification systems and those that are currently unmeasured.
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