Surveying Residential Burglaries: A Case Study of Local-Level Crime Measurement

Our goal is to document the general issues that arise in estimating and comparing local crime rates over time and for different cities. Data are drawn from police-based residential burglary counts and the National Crime Victimization Survey to obtain interval estimates of residential burglary incide...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Criminal justice policy review 2017-12, Vol.28 (9), p.918-940
Main Authors: Brame, Robert, Turner, Michael G., Paternoster, Raymond
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Burglary
Case studies
Cities
Criminal statistics
Hierarchies
Police
Uniform Crime Reports
Victimization
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Summary:Our goal is to document the general issues that arise in estimating and comparing local crime rates over time and for different cities. Data are drawn from police-based residential burglary counts and the National Crime Victimization Survey to obtain interval estimates of residential burglary incidence at the local level. Ambiguity exists when making point estimates of crime that are based entirely on Uniform Crime Reports data. Sources of this ambiguity include (a) the “Hierarchy Rule,” (b) population estimates used in estimating the burglary rate, and (c) variation in the probability that a residential burglary victim reports the incident to the police. Analyses document uncertainty of burglary rates when comparing across cities and over time. We think it will be useful to begin reporting crime patterns in terms of a range of uncertainty that expresses both what is known and unknown about the numbers that are used to measure those patterns.
ISSN:0887-4034
1552-3586
DOI:10.1177/0887403415617807