Surveys of Population Samples for Estimating Crime Incidence

Abstract

A national survey and intensive surveys in three cities were undertaken for the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (hereinafter referred to as the National Crime Commission), to assess crime incidence by asking random samples of the public whether they had been victimized by crime. The major difficulties of these surveys arose from victimization's being an infrequent and usually not highly salient life event for most people. Even though these surveys found victimization to be far more common than suggested by national or local police statistics, they captured people's experiences selectively and incom pletely. The immediate data from a victim survey naturally differ in form from police and other agency statistics. While these make the survey data distinctively instructive, they present problems for comparison with police statistics. Such comparisons as can be made suggest that a large volume of citizen complaints to the police are not reflected in published offense statistics.