Hi Jeff: 50 years plus of the National Crime Victimization Survey, a peer reviewed gauge that the OJP frequently spends a ton of money on to see if a redesign is necessary. When it was introduced, it was offered as an alternative to crimes reported to law enforcement with virtually every criminologist in the country applauding the new effort. National media was widely supportive. I try to read a variety of articles on crime daily and I have yet to see the NCVS criticized.
The premise was that the country would never understand the nation's crime problems unless it was based on a full accounting of crime. 50 years ago, the criminological community said that crimes reported to law enforcement was a terrible way of measuring crime yet today, we embrace property crime findings without question based on less than 30 percent being reported and property crimes are the overwhelming number of overall crime.
It's my hope that after this campaign, we have a chance to reevaluate how we measure crime. It seems inexcusable that we had huge gains in 2022 and 2023 without asking why. We have a chance to analyze or use geolocation data (yes, BJS has that capacity) to look at data to understand what's going on. But we don't. Why?
Wasn't that the purpose of the NCVS? Are we throwing science down the drain? No one is uncomfortable with this?
Hi Jeff: 50 years plus of the National Crime Victimization Survey, a peer reviewed gauge that the OJP frequently spends a ton of money on to see if a redesign is necessary. When it was introduced, it was offered as an alternative to crimes reported to law enforcement with virtually every criminologist in the country applauding the new effort. National media was widely supportive. I try to read a variety of articles on crime daily and I have yet to see the NCVS criticized.
The premise was that the country would never understand the nation's crime problems unless it was based on a full accounting of crime. 50 years ago, the criminological community said that crimes reported to law enforcement was a terrible way of measuring crime yet today, we embrace property crime findings without question based on less than 30 percent being reported and property crimes are the overwhelming number of overall crime.
It's my hope that after this campaign, we have a chance to reevaluate how we measure crime. It seems inexcusable that we had huge gains in 2022 and 2023 without asking why. We have a chance to analyze or use geolocation data (yes, BJS has that capacity) to look at data to understand what's going on. But we don't. Why?
Wasn't that the purpose of the NCVS? Are we throwing science down the drain? No one is uncomfortable with this?
Best, Len.