Crime & Victimization in the United States

2017 National Crime Victims’ Rights Week: Crime and Victimization Fact Sheets

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s National Crime Victimization 

Survey (NCVS) are the two largest and most comprehensive resources for information relating to crime and victimization 

in the United States. While the UCR and the NCVS serve separate purposes, they complement each other in a number 

of ways. The most important distinction between the two is that the UCR reports information regarding crimes known 

to law enforcement agencies (but cannot reflect unreported crime), while the NCVS measures reported and unreported 

victimizations, helping researchers identify “the dark figure of crime”—those hidden victimizations that the UCR 

is unable to track. Together the UCR and the NCVS provide researchers, policymakers, and the public with a general 

understanding regarding the state of crime and victimization in the United States. 

Uniform Crime Report 

The Uniform Crime Report (UCR), launched in 1929, collects information reported to law enforcement agencies on the 

following crimes: murder and non-negligent homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, human trafficking, burglary, 

larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

Law enforcement agencies also report arrest data for 22 

additional crime categories (e.g., forgery and counterfeiting, 

drug abuse violations, disorderly conduct, vagrancy). Each 

year, the FBI issues a report on the main UCR findings, titled 

Crime in the United States, as well as several other reports 

(e.g., Hate Crimes 2015 and Law Enforcement Officers Killed 

and Assaulted, 2015). The UCR presents crime counts for the 

entire nation, as well as for regions, states, counties, cities, 

towns, tribal law enforcement, and colleges and universities. 

Its primary purpose is to provide reliable criminal justice statistics for law enforcement administration and management.

National Crime Victimization Survey

The methodology for the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which began in 1973, differs from that of the UCR. 

The NCVS is based on a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. Household members age 12 and older are 

interviewed by the U.S. Census Bureau every 6 months for a 3-year period. The NCVS collects information on the frequency 

and nature of: rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, household burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft.

It does not, however, measure homicide, commercial crimes, 

crimes against residents under 12 years old, or crimes against 

individuals in other residential settings (e.g., nursing homes, 

long-term care facilities), and may exclude highly mobile 

populations and people who are homeless. 

It gathers information on crimes both reported and not 

reported to the police, estimates the proportion of crimes 

reported to law enforcement, and describes the reasons 

victims gave for reporting or not reporting. The NCVS also 

includes questions about victims’ experiences with the criminal justice system, possible substance use by offenders, and how 

victims sought to protect themselves. The NCVS collects demographic information about both victims and offenders (e.g., 

age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, income, educational level, relationship between victim and offender), as well as 

information about the crimes (including time and place of occurrence, use of weapons, nature of injury, and economic impact). 

The NCVS also collects periodic supplements on specific crime issues such as stalking or school crime.

UCR Crimes 

• murder/non-negligent 

manslaughter

• rape

• robbery

• aggravated assault

• human trafficking 

• burglary

• larceny-theft

• motor vehicle theft

• arson 

NCVS Crimes 

• rape

• sexual assault

• robbery

• aggravated assault

• simple assault

• household burglary

• theft

• motor vehicle theft 
RESOURCES

FBI, “Uniform Crime Reporting,” (U.S. Department of Justice), 

https://ucr.fbi.gov

Bureau of Justice Statistics, “National Crime Victimization Survey,” (U.S. 

Department of Justice), https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&iid=245

UCR Improvements

1. Continuing the transition from SRS (the current 

UCR method of data collection) to the National 

Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) by 

2021. 

2. Providing researchers, policymakers, and the general 

public with information regarding the use-offorce or the discharge of a firearm by law 

enforcement officers.

NCVS Improvements

1. Providing subnational estimates: While the 

original purpose of the NCVS was to provide 

estimates of victimization at the national level, the 

NCVS subnational program underway will generate 

victimization estimates for the 22 largest states. 

2. Modernizing socio-demographic information

to reflect victimization by sexual orientation, gender 

identity, veteran status, and citizenship. 

3. Expanding the information collected about formal and 

informal help-seeking behavior, issues related to 

fear of crime, and perceptions of neighborhood 

disorder and police performance.

4. Expanding the type of crimes collected in the NCVS, 

including stalking and fraud.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics in partnership with the 

Office for Victims of Crime is also launching the new Victim 

Services Statistical Research Program (VSSRP) to build a 

critical body of knowledge for the field by collecting and 

analyzing national data from victims and the diverse 

entities that serve them. In addition to data collected from 

victims as described above, data collected directly from 

entities that serve victims is important for understanding 

whether providers have the capacity to meet the needs of 

all victims seeking services. BJS’s VSSRP includes a number 

of initiatives to collect information from victim service 

providers, including the new National Census of Victim 

Service Providers (NCVSP) and National Survey of Victim 

Service Providers (NSVSP), both designed to help define and 

enhance understanding of all types of providers in the field. 

While the UCR and the NCVS are important resources for researchers, policymakers, and the public, they cannot address all 

crimes or all victimizations. And though national collection efforts continue to grow, gaps still exist, particularly for emerging 

crimes, including elder victimization, human trafficking, financial crime (especially Internet-based fraud), stalking, and mass 

casualty crimes.

The Future of Crime and Victimization Research

In 2015, the UCR Program released a plan to improve and 

modernize their data collection. Two key aspects of this 

plan included: 

The NCVS is also currently undergoing a redesign. This 

multi-year effort to fill long-standing gaps in information 

will include:

Other efforts focus on particular types of service providers, 

such as the collaboration between BJS and the National 

Center for Health Statistics to develop a new National 

Survey of Hospital Victim Services to better understand the 

range of hospital services available for crime victims. BJS 

has also added questions about victim services to existing 

surveys of law enforcement agencies and prosecutors’ 

offices. Together, all of these efforts will offer the most 

comprehensive picture of victim service provision to date.