NCJ Number
82188
Journal
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science Volume: 453 Dated: (January 1981) Pages: 222-236
Date Published
1981
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article evaluates the Social Indicators III report on public safety and finds it, like its predecessor in 1976, largely a report on major crimes against persons and their property and social responses to them, rather than a statistical report on public safety.
Abstract
Because the report examines the view of crime as the overriding concern in public safety, this critique scritinizes the profile of major crimes against persons as violent and against their property as serious by presenting more detailed statistics on victimization by crime and its consequences from both Uniform Crime Reporting and the National Crime Survey. It provides evidence that reporting for major types of crime, such as rape, robbery, burglary, and larceny-theft, masks considerable heterogeneity in seriousness of crime events. The substantial proportion of some crimes that are attempted rather than completed events, that either result in no material harm to the victim or very little, and that disclose recovery and compensation for loss, are cited to cast doubt upon the view that most crimes against persons are violent and that crimes against persons and property result in substantial physical harm and economic loss. The article points out that statistics on crime, unfortunately, do not permit one to relate the cost of one victimization to one economic position, so that just how trivial much crime victimization is remains in doubt. Moreover, current statistics likewise do not permit one to calculate one's risk of victimization by crime. Footnotes are provided. (Author abstract modified)