The three methods often used to collect juvenile crime data include self-reports of offenses, victims’ reports of crimes and arrests statistics or Uniform Crime Report. The three methods may produce different crime trends and rates. Each method has got its strength and weaknesses, and every method gives an incomplete picture of the offenses. The first common method of collecting crime is using Uniform Crime Reports gotten from data known to the police and the data based on the arrests which are reported yearly to the FBI by the different police agencies across the country. The UCR yields crime counts for the whole country including towns, cities, counties states as well as different regions (Hindelang, Hirschi, Weis, 1981).
The second method is the victimization surveys. This is a yearly nationwide survey done on crime victims and the circumstances under which they were victimized including household and personal victimization pattern. This method is specific on juvenile. The method uses nationwide telephone survey of parents or caregivers of the children between 2 to 17 years and collects data of up to 34 victimization types (Hindelang, Hirschi, Weis, 1981). The method covers specific crimes as well as additional details on the offender and the victim such as the time of the day that crime occurred and if the victim is known to the offender. Finally, there is the self-report survey which collects voluntary information from children ranging from 11 years to 17 years about their juvenile crimes.
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UCR allows for law enforcement administrators to develop strategies and designate resources that can help combat crime effectively. Unlike the other two methods of data collection, UCR collects additional information on the offenses pertaining to the agencies making the arrest, the loss of property, offenders, victim information and the offenses (Hindelang, Hirschi& Weis, 1981). Furthermore, unlike the other two methods, the UCR expands the summary of crime statistics to include specific incident analysis and specific victims along with complete incident data to all crimes.
The victimization survey collects data which are related to criminal behaviors and information about several factors which pertain to several offenses. It accounts for delinquency and information which police do not know, reasons why crimes go unreported as well as the changing dynamics of crimes. Even though the victimization survey was expanded to include analysis of patterns of victimization, it is still limited to crimes of interest and not all crimes. Moreover, it only relies on the accounts of the victims and thus may suffer from biases and unreliability (Hindelang, Hirschi & Weis, 1981). Self-report data has a problem with the accuracy of information given. Since it provides information not known to police, it is difficult to determine the accuracy of the information provided.
Of the three methods of data collection, I find the Uniform Crime Report the most reliable. This is because unlike the other two methods which rely on the accounts of the victims and the offenders and may suffer from biases, the UCR method is more reliable because it critically analyzes the data provided and collects data on both victims and the offenders with a wide range of crime data categories.
Reference
Hindelang, M. J., Hirschi, T., & Weis, J. G. (1981). Measuring delinquency . Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
