Читать книгу Criminology For Dummies - Steven Briggs - Страница 56

How do researchers get around the problem that so many crimes go unreported? The best answer is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Each year, the U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (part of the U.S. Department of Justice) conducts a survey of 95,000 households and asks people 12 and older questions in a series of interviews about crimes they experienced over a three-year period. Based on this sampling, the Bureau of Justice Statistics then estimates rates for a variety of crimes. (The survey excludes uncommon crimes, such as kidnapping, because the sampling isn’t large enough.) To see the 2019 version of the survey, you can visit the Bureau of Justice Statistics website.

As expected, the NCVS shows that many crimes aren’t reported to the police. For example, the number of rapes reported to census workers for the NCVS in 2018 is 35 percent higher than the number of rapes reported to police. Women often don’t report rape for a variety of reasons, such as shame, embarrassment, fear of the suspect, a process that can seem degrading, and a concern that the report won’t do any good. (See Chapter 5 for more information about violent crimes, including rape.)

Like the other forms of measuring crime, victimization surveys have their shortcomings, too. Primarily, they’re very expensive. Because of their high cost, the NCVS sampling of 95,000 households is not large enough to draw meaningful conclusions at the state and local levels. For instance, a criminologist in Pueblo, New Mexico, can’t draw any conclusions about rape trends in his home state or town from this national survey. Thus, the NCVS data isn’t very helpful in planning to provide resources to local domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.

Separate from the NCVS, local and state governments, nonprofit agencies, and universities sometimes conduct their own localized surveys. Such surveys aren’t limited to victims, however. Researchers rely heavily on surveys of youth alcohol and drug use to identify new and dangerous trends. For example, in 2019, the number of 12th graders vaping marijuana in the previous 30 days had doubled since 2018.