CRIME RATESmeasures of the relative rate of crime. In the mid-
1970s the NCVS conducted victimization studies
with reasonably large size samples; 10,000 or more
households containing some 22,000 respondents,
in each of twenty-six large U.S. cities. The same
cities, of course, reported UCR crime rates for
Part I crimes. This provided the opportunity to
compare the consistency of these estimates in
terms of the relative crime rates measured by the
NCVS and the UCR by correlating the two crime-
rate measures across the twenty-six cities. The
closer these correlations are to 1.00, the greater
the degree to which cities with relatively high rates
(low rates) on one of the measures have relatively
high rates (low rates) on the other. Across these
cities, the correlation of UCR and NCVS motor
vehicle theft rates was .90 or higher (Nelson 1978,
1979; O’Brien, Shichor, and Decker 1980). The
correlations were close to zero for rape, negative
for aggravated assault, and positive and moderate-
ly strong for burglary and robbery. This indicates
that for burglary and robbery the relative rates of
crime in these cities are similar whether the UCR
or NCVS measures are used, but they are not
similar for rape and aggravated assault.
Overall, the use of homicide rates and motor
vehicle theft rates to measure the relative amount
of these crimes across cities is supported by the
above findings. The use of burglary and robbery
rates receives weaker support, and the use of rape
and aggravated assault rates to compare the rela-
tive amount of these crimes across cities does not
receive support.
Gender and Race Composition of Offenders.
Hindelang (1978, 1979) addressed the issue of
whether the UCR and victim reports (NCVS) pro-
duce similar percentages of offenders identified as
African American or white or as male or female.
O’Brien (1995, 2000) replicated these finding us-
ing more recent data. These comparisons indicate
that for those crimes in which the victim and
offender come into contact (which enables the
victim to identify the race and sex of the offender),
the percentages based on the UCR and NCVS are
fairly similar. For example, O’Brien (2000) aggre-
gates data for the years 1992 to 1994 and finds that
the percentages of males involved in these crimes,
according to the UCR and NCVS, never differ by
more than 3 percent. For race of the offender,
rape produces the largest difference with victims
stating that 33.2 percent of the offenders are
African American and the UCR arrest data indicat-
ing that 42.7 percent of those arrested are African
American. For robbery, aggravated assault, and
simple assault the differences do not exceed 5
percent.Self-report data at one time were considered
to be inconsistent with UCR data, which indicated
that males committed crimes at a much higher rate
than females and that African Americans also
committed crimes at a much higher rate than
whites. These large differences between males and
females and African Americans and whites, how-
ever, are not found when self-report studies ask
about more serious crimes and ask more carefully
about the frequency of offending (Elliot and Ageton
1980; Hindelang, Hirschi, and Weis 1979).
These comparisons only touch on the issue of
the appropriate uses of UCR, NCVS, and self-
report data. The appropriate uses depend upon
the type of crime and the type of comparison. (For
helpful information on which to judge the appro-
priate uses of these data see Biderman and Lynch
1991; Gove Hughes and Geerken 1985; O’Brien
1985, 2000).INTERNATIONAL DATAMany nations collect data from law enforcement
agencies, survey victims, and conduct self-report
surveys. Difficulties arise, however, when compar-
ing these data, since the definitions of crimes and
the counting rules differ from nation to nation. In
this section we note some of these problems and
cautiously present crime-rate data for two nations.
In addition, for a larger number of nations, we
present homicide rates.Perhaps the most comparable large national
victimization surveys are the NCVS (conducted in
the United States) and the British Crime Survey
(conducted in England and Wales). But even in
this case, there are important differences—the
British Crime Survey (BCS) uses a twelve-month
reference period and unbounded interviews, while
the NCVS uses a six-month reference period and
bounded interviews. The former difference should
decrease the estimated victimization rates in the
BCS due to ‘‘memory decay,’’ but the latter should
increase these rates due to ‘‘telescoping.’’ The
BCS does not ask about crimes involving victims