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 ust
a few weeks after the media reported the end of America's historic
drop in crime, a new study different from the one the media reported
on suggests that America became much safer between 1999 and 2000.
According
to this week’s National Crime Victimization Survey — or NCVS
— violent crime fell 15 percent in 2000 while property crime
fell ten percent. These findings, based on a Census Bureau survey
of 160,000 Americans, are out of sync with the FBI's annual compilation
of police statistics — the Uniform Crime Reports — which
showed that absolute crime reports remained flat between 1999 and
2000 while the crime rate declined slightly. Between 1992 and 2000,
America saw the longest and steepest period of crime reduction since
record keeping started in the 1930s.
Overall, the
latest NVCS appears to provide a lot of good news. Rape fell by
about a third; robbery, 11 percent; and motor-vehicle theft, 14
percent.
Only two subcategories,
attempted motor-vehicle theft and attempted property theft, saw
increases. Even this isn't bad news because it may well show that
improved security measures have begun to foil criminals.
So, why the
large discrepancy? Well, to begin with, the two studies look at
different things: The NVCS is a telephone survey that asks respondents
whether anyone in their household fell victim to a crime during
the previous year, while the FBI surveys crimes reported to local
police departments. As a result, the NCVS doesn't account for what
happens when crime rates change dramatically for a particular city
or demographic group. Indeed, it's possible for crime rates to go
up as victimization goes down if fewer households fall victim to
more crime.
The survey
provides some evidence that this happened last year: Latinos reported
just as many property victimizations as the year before even though
every other sizeable demographic group saw declines. But this can't
explain the discrepancy alone because groups that have borne the
brunt of previous crime waves — poor people and African-Americans
— saw continued reductions in victimization and even Latinos
didn't fall victim to any more crime than the previous year. The
NCVS, however, can't identify every demographic group. If a sufficiently
delineated demographic group, such as white suburbanites with high-school-age
children, began falling victim to dramatically more crimes, then
the study would probably miss the shift.
The two studies
also capture different types of crime. Many people won't bother
to file a police report for minor property crimes like the theft
of a garden hose but will remember them when a survey-taker calls.
Victims of rapes and other particularly traumatic assaults, likewise,
may decide that the difficulties of reliving their experience outweigh
the benefits of bringing the attacker to justice. In addition, the
UCR reports that the FBI released in May gave crime rates only for
cities with more than 100,000 residents. If crime remained level
in major cities while falling significantly in the suburbs, then
that could explain the discrepancy. But suburban and urban crime
rates typically move in sync with one another.
One factor
certainly explains part of the discrepancy: People reported more
crimes to the police in 2000 than they did in 1999. According to
the NCVS, the percentage of crimes reported to the police hit historical
highs during 2000. Reporting rose most dramatically amongst blacks
and Latinos. Still, the reporting levels rose only modestly for
the population overall.
No survey
can give us a fully accurate reading of the exact number of crimes
committed in a given year, but the sum of several surveys can show
us the direction of America's crime trends. The most recent NCVS
survey indicates that America's progress against crime hasn't ground
to a sudden halt, but no obvious factor can explain dramatic decreases
in victimization rates. It seems likely that some other factor,
yet unknown, will befuddle criminologists for the next few years.
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