The primary sources of data for cross-national crime rates are grossly inadequate because they typically comprise reports of crime by the public to the police. In addition, national idiosyncrasies of such data, varying legal definitions of crime, and variations in social perceptions of crime seriousness make it very difficult to glean meaningful cross-country crime data from police-based statistics of individual countries. In an effort to transcend the peculiarities of national legal systems, comparativists have turned to other sources of data, the most promising being victimization surveys. However, these surveys have methodological limitations, and their reliability as a source of data on cross-national crime trends has not been established. The International Crime Survey (ICS) has been devised in an attempt to apply standardized questionnaires, sampling methods and data analyses to a large number of countries. Whether or not the ICS is eventually judged to be a useful cross-national indicator of victimization will hinge on how well it reflects the situation in each participating country, and whether it reflects the actual experience of victimization rather than the national consciousness of it. Notes