National Crime Victimization Survey

The national Crime victimization survey refers to a body in the United States of America

that is the primary source of information on the criminal victimization. Annually, data from

240,000 persons is obtained from 150,000 households where they are interviewed on the

characteristics, frequency and criminal victimization consequences in the United States.

Information collected comes from non-fatal personal crimes like sexual assault, aggravated

robbery, simple assault and personal larceny. Also the NCVS collects information related to

household property crimes which include; theft of motor vehicle, burglary crimes that are both

reported and non-reported to the police. The survey participants provide information about their

race, age, marital status, Hispanic origin, offender-victim relationship, sex, education level,

income and whether they have ever experienced any form of victimization. The NCVS collects

information about; characteristics of the crime, which includes the place and time of occurrence,

if incase weapons were used, injury nature sustained, injury nature towards the offender to a

victim, and economic consequences that are related to their victimization. In addition,

information provided includes whether the crime was reported to the authorities, if not the

various main reasons as to why the crime wasn’t reported, the experiences of victims in the

criminal justice system.

Contribution of NCVS, UCR and NIBRS Towards Sustainable Development in

Crime Statistics

The National Crime Victimization Survey reports information of reported crimes to the

police in the US and those that are not reported to the police officers. By doing this, it acts as a
great source of information to researcher’s and the general public regarding victimization.

Freedom of information is guaranteed via these body since it looks at the hidden information of

victim crimes and that is open to the public. When NCVS conducts interviews on household’s

participants, they unleash information that is sensitive and hidden by many victims as they fear

to report them. Moreover, NCVS helps in the eradication of crimes in the society as potential

victims report of any issues that affect them as a whole to the researchers which leads to

provision of adequate results. UCR on the other hand contains information of reported crimes

only to the FBI and the police. UCR does not contain and accord of any unreported crimes and

only provides reported crimes to the public. NIBRS takes information already recorded by the

LEA’S using modern management systems records that capture incident crime based data. This

information is only focused on the reported crimes rather than the unreported crimes.