VICTIMIZATION ACROSS THE NATION: THE BIG PICTURE
Victimologists gather and interpret data to answer crucial questions such as: How many people are harmed by criminals each year? Is victimization becoming more of a problem or is it subsiding as time goes by? And which groups are targeted the most and the least often? Researchers want to find out where and when the majority of incidents occur, whether predators on the prowl intimidate and subjugate their prey with their bare hands or use weapons, and if so, what kinds? It is also impor- tant to determine whether individuals are attacked by complete strangers or people they know, and how these intended targets act when confronted by assailants. What proportion try to escape or fight back, how many are injured, what percentage
need to be hospitalized, and how much money do they typically lose in an incident?
The answers to specific questions like these yield statistical portraits of crime victims, the pat- terns that persist over the years, and the trends that unfold as time passes; when taken together, they constitute what can be termed the big picture —an overview of what is really happening across the entire United States during the twenty-first century. The big picture serves as an antidote to impressions based on direct but limited personal experiences, as well as self-serving reports circulated by organizations with vested interests, misleading media images, crude stereotypes, and widely held myths. But putting together the big picture is not easy. Compiling an accurate portrayal requires care- ful planning, formulation of the right questions, proper data collection techniques, and insightful analyses.
The big picture is constructed by making sys- tematic observations and accurate measurements on the local level. Then, these village, city, and county reports must be aggregated so victimologists and criminologists are able to characterize the situation in an entire state, region of the country, and ulti- mately the nation as a whole. (Sociologists would call this process as going from an up-close and per- sonal micro level up to a more institutional and systemwide macro level of analysis.) An alternative path to follow is to assemble a randomly selected nationwide sample and then ask those people to share their experiences about what offenders did to them during the past year. If the sample is rep- resentative and large enough, then the findings from this survey can be generalized to project esti- mates about what is happening in the country as a whole. Once the big picture is assembled, it becomes possible to make comparisons between the situation in the United States and other post- industrial societies around the world. The similari- ties are increasing and cultural differences are diminishing as globalization is fostering a modern way of life, which involves seeking higher educa- tion, commuting over congested highways to work, shopping in malls, watching cable TV pro- gramming, using the Internet, and calling the police
LEARNING OBJECTIVES continued
To explore the kinds of information about victims that can be found in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report.
To learn how the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System is extracting more information drawn from police files about victims.
To appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of this source of official statistics.
To discover what data about victims and their plight can be found in the federal government’s alternative source of information, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey.
To recognize the strengths and weaknesses of this alter- native source of government statistics.
To assemble official statistics to spot trends, and especially whether the problem of criminal victimization has been intensifying or diminishing over recent decades.
To develop a feel for historical trends in the level of violence in the United States.
To be able to weigh the threat of crime against other perils by understanding comparative risks.
V I C T IM I Z AT ION IN T H E UN I T ED S T AT ES : AN OVE RV I E W 67
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on smartphones for help, that has spread to even the most remote regions of the planet.
Until the 1970s, few efforts were made to rou- tinely monitor and systematically measure various indicators of the plight of the nation’s victims. By the 1980s, a great many social scientists and agencies were conducting the research needed to bring the big picture into focus. Also, all sorts of special- interest groups began keeping count and dissemi- nating their own estimates about the suffering of a wide variety of victims, including youngsters wounded at school, college students hurt or killed on campus, children reported missing by their par- ents, and people singled out by assailants who hate their “kind.”
The statistics presented in this chapter come from official sources and shed light on the big picture concerning “street crimes” involving inter- personal violence and theft.