The National Crime Victimization Survey

Some perspective on the extent of the underreporting of crimes against juveniles can be obtained from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which is conducted by the Bureau of the Census on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. The NCVS gathers information from citizens on crimes including whether and how they are reported. It also collects a great deal of information about the characteristics of victimizations (to the degree that the victim can report them), including victim and perpetrator demographics; the nature of the incident location; and a description of the incident, including, but not limited to, type of crime, use of weapons, and injuries to the victim. The active sample contains about 55,000 households and approximately 100,000 individual respondents. Response rates for both eligible households and individuals are more than 90 percent. When data from 1995 and 1996 are combined, information on approximately 32,000 victimizations of all types is available.

The NCVS gathers data only on certain categories of violent crime (rape and sexual assault, robbery, and assault) and theft. The rape and sexual assault category includes completed and attempted rape, all sexual attacks, any unwanted sexual contact, and any verbal threats of rape or sexual assault. Robbery consists of completed and attempted robberies, with or without accompanying injuries. Assault encompasses all completed and attempted assaults, whether aggravated or simple, and includes verbal threats of assault. Theft includes completed personal thefts, regardless of value, but does not include purse snatching, pocket picking, burglary, or motor vehicle theft. When data are combined from the 1995 and 1996 surveys (the most recent years of accessible NCVS data), information is available on 6,942 violent crime victimizations, 1,684 of which occurred to youth ages 12 to 17 and on 18,296 thefts, 2,826 of which occurred to youth.

Key Points

NCVS data on juvenile crime victimizations reported to police and other authorities indicate that:

• Only 28 percent of violent crimes against juveniles become known to police (see figure 1).

• An additional 16 percent of violent crimes against juveniles are reported to some authority other than the police, mostly school officials.

• Juvenile victims are substantially less likely than adult victims to have their violent crimes reported to the police or any other authority.

• Violent sexual assault, although generally underreported, is one crime that is reported to police and other authorities about as often for juveniles as for adults.

• Only 10 percent of thefts against juveniles become known to police, but an additional 29 percent of such thefts get reported to other authorities, such as school officials.

• High-value thefts (more than $250) with juvenile victims are less likely to be reported to police or any other authority than those with adult victims.

• Juveniles report more low-value thefts (less than $50) to some authority than do adults, mostly to school officials.

Reporting Victimizations

This analysis focuses on the information gathered by the NCVS on juvenile and adult reporting of crime. The initial question asked by NCVS interviewers about reporting is: "Were the police informed or did they find out about this incident in any way?" If respondents answer, "No," they are then asked: "What was the reason it was not reported to the police?" The respondents' reasons are classified by the interviewer, and one of the possible response categories is "Reported to another official (guard, apartment manager, school official, etc.)." It is important to note that the police question can be answered "Yes" even if the victims did not report to police themselves but the police found out in some other way, for example, through reporting by another person. Also when a report is said to have been made to another authority, it means that the incident was not also known or reported to the police (at least to the victim's knowledge). Thus in the following discussion, the phrase "reported to" is synonymous with "known to" and does not imply that the victim was the reporter, and a report to "other authorities" does not include incidents that were reported to other authorities but then became known to the police.

NCVS Limitations

Information gathered by the NCVS on the reporting of juvenile victimization is limited in some respects. The survey does not collect data on children younger than age 12, thereby excluding an important group of juvenile victims whose victimizations may be particularly underreported. It does not gather information on certain important kinds of juvenile victimizations, such as the nonforcible sex offenses of statutory rape and incest, which constitute a significant segment of the juvenile crimes reported to police (Finkelhor and Ormrod, in press). It may also substantially undercount juvenile victimization for methodological reasons (Wells and Rankin, 1995), for example: the "crime context" in which the questions are asked (youth may be less likely than adults to think of their victimizations as real crimes); the questionnaire design, which contains concepts and formulations that may be obscure to children; and the fact that information from respondents is not gathered in private and youth may be particularly reluctant to disclose some victimizations in front of parents or family. Despite its limitations, the scope and size of the NCVS and its detailed questions about reporting to police and other authorities make it useful for exploring the nature of reporting patterns.

Lower Reporting Rates for Juvenile Victims of Violent Crime

Only 28 percent of violent crimes against juveniles become known to police (see figure 1). A low percentage in absolute terms, it is also lower than the 48 percent of violent crimes against adults that come to police attention. An important feature of juvenile victimization is that nonpolice authorities, especially school officials, sometimes dispense justice for both violent and property offenses. Consequently, a substantial percentage of juvenile violent victimizations (16 percent) get reported to authorities other than the police. Even taking into account other forms of nonpolice reporting, juvenile victimizations still are less likely to be known to any authority (44 percent for juveniles and 55 percent for adults). As might be expected, school victimizations of juveniles are less likely to be reported to police than nonschool victimizations (15 percent and 37 percent, respectively), but more likely to be reported to some authority (49 percent and 41 percent, respectively).

The underreporting of violent victimizations of juveniles compared with violent victimizations of adults holds across most categories of crime, including crimes committed with weapons (48 percent and 65 percent, respectively), crimes resulting in injury (57 percent and 65 percent, respectively), and crimes committed by all categories of perpetrators, including strangers (45 percent and 54 percent, respectively). Violent crimes committed by juveniles against juveniles are particularly underreported compared with violent crimes committed by juveniles against adults (42 percent and 56 percent, respectively), and the underreporting is especially pronounced if only police reports are considered (20 percent and 41 percent, respectively).

The pattern of reporting varies to some degree with the age of the juvenile (see figure 2). Reporting violent crime to any authority remains at about 40 to 50 percent throughout the adolescent years, but reporting it to police starts at only 20 percent for 12-year-olds and rises to 38 percent for 17-year-olds. The pattern suggests that reports to police of crimes against children under age 12, who are not polled by the NCVS, are even less frequent than for teenagers.

Reporting Crimes Against Juveniles	Juvenile Justice Bulletin   ·  November 1999