crime and justice in america: 1776-1976 || the growth of crime in the united states

American Academy of Political and Social Science

The Growth of Crime in the United StatesAuthor(s): Harold E. PepinskySource: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 423, Crime andJustice in America: 1776-1976 (Jan., 1976), pp. 23-30Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and SocialScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1041420 .

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ANNALS, AAPSS, 423, Jan. 1976

The Growth of Crime in the United States

By HAROLD E. PEPINSKY

ABSTRACT: The growth of crime in the United States has been viewed as a social problem since the founding of the Republic. From at least the middle of the nineteenth century, this growth can be explained as an outcome of the development of crime measurement technology. American crime measurement specialists have consistently operated under a pair of assumptions: that crime is underreported rather than overreported in crime statistics and that rates of crime generally increase. These assumptions have be- come the foundation of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Efforts have been devoted to detecting larger rates of crime by using each measure that has been developed, and new measures have continued to be created to supplement the old. Recently, for instance, police departments "refined" their procedures for compiling offense reports, so rates of offenses known to the police climbed dramatically. And the victim survey was developed to supplement police data, with the victim data interpreted as indicating that crime rates are increasing far faster than we had previously imagined.

It is proposed that those engaged in crime measurement be given incentives to report fewer offenses. Otherwise, regardless of change in the level of interpersonal conflict in American society, the prophecy of American crime measurement specialists can be expected to continue to fulfill itself, with an unabated growth of crime.

Harold E. Pepinsky is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York at Albany. He has written articles and chapters on Chinese law, police, white-collar crime, and on general macroscopic issues of law and social control. He is the author of a forthcoming book entitled Crime and Conflict: A Study of Law and Society.

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

NTERACTION of two sets of be- liefs accounts for much of the

history of crime measurement in the United States:

There has always been too much crime. Virtually every generation since the founding of the Nation and before has felt itself threatened by the spectre of rising crime and violence.1

And:

There is general agreement as to the importance of official and trustworthy statistics of crime, criminals, criminal justice, and penal administration. The eagerness with which the un- systematic, often inaccurate, and more often incomplete statistics available for this country are taken up by text writers, writers in the periodicals, newspaper writers, and public speakers speaks for itself. Most of those who write and speak on American criminal justice assume certain things to be well known or incontrovertible. But as one looks for the facts underlying such assumptions he soon finds they are not at hand.2

Generally speaking, those engaged in measuring crime have taken the position that the gathering and interpretation of crime statistics can and should be free from a priori assumptions. But, of course, such assumptions must be intro- duced into interpretations of the significance of these or any social statistics. The assumptions that have been accepted in the field of crime measurement in our country appear to have had some untoward consequences.

1. President's Commission on Law En- forcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: Crime and Its Impact- An Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1967), p. 19.

2. National Commission on Law Observ- ance and Enforcement, No. 3: Report on Statistics (Washington, D.C.: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1931), p. 3.

THE GROWTH OF CRIME MEASUREMENT

European concern for and initial development of crime statistics apparently preceded those in America. The earliest call for crime statistics found by Sellin and Wolf- gang3 in their historical survey was that made in the seventeenth century by an Englishman, Sir William Petty.4 Nationwide crime (conviction) statistics were first collected in France in 1827.

The most comprehensive survey of the early history of crime measurement in the United States is that done by Louis Newton Robinson.5 According to his survey, the earliest American crime statistics collected on a statewide basis were judicial statistics in New York in 1829. By 1905, 25 states had legislation pro- viding for compilation of statistics on numbers of people prosecuted and convicted in their courts. Statewide prison statistics followed on the heels ofjudicial statistics, beginning with Massachusetts in 1834.

Judicial statistics thus became the first indicator of how much crime there was and of trends in rates and numbers of crimes to be used in the United States. These data soon drew criticism for being incomplete, as early as 1836 by Henry Lyfton Bulwer for the French figures,6 ac-

3. Thorsten Sellin and Marvin E. Wolf- gang, The Measurement of Delinquency (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1964), p. 7.

4. William Petty, The Petty Papers: Some Unpublished Papers of Sir William Petty (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1927).

5. Louis Newton Robinson, History and Organization of Criminal Statistics in the United States (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin Company, 1911).

6. Henry Lyfton Bulwer, France: Social, Literary, Political (London: Richard Bentley, 1836), vol. 1, pp. 169-210.

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THE GROWTH OF CRIME

cording to Biderman and Reiss.7 Robinson repeatedly echoed this criticism for American figures in 1911.8

The criticism of judicial statistics had two aspects. On the one hand, it pointed to the likelihood that not every case of the kind being measured got into the statistics. For instance, Robinson concluded that many court convictions did not get reported in the state figures.9 On the other hand, the criticism pointed to the likelihood that the commission of a substantial number of crimes never led to conviction in the first place. Robinson asserted the belief that state crime statistics would always fail to include some crimes.10

The number of crimes that goes unreported by any measure has come to be known among crime measurement specialists as "hidden crime" or, more menacingly, as "the dark figure" or the "dark number." This purported bias in crime rate or crime incidence measurement has been a consistent source of concern in the United States, in this century at least. The possibility that the dark figure is not constant or does not vary consistently in relation to some population base, has also led to concern that crime statistics may not indicate whether crime is really increasing or decreasing over time.

With this aura of doubt, practically all American crime measurement specialists have persistently clung to two assumptions: (1) that crime is

7. Albert D. Biderman and Albert J. Reiss, Jr., "On Exploring the 'Dark Figure' of Crime," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 374 (Novem- ber 1967), pp. 1-15.

8. Robinson, Criminal Statistics. 9. Ibid., pp. 38-68.

10. Ibid., p. 7.

consistently underreported rather than overreported in crime statistics and (2) that rates of crime tend to increase over time, with but a few possible exceptions.

Scientists can never be certain about causes and effects, but, consistently with the history of Ameri- can crime measurement, it can be postulated that the growth of crime in our society can be accounted for as an outcome of widespread acceptance of these two assumptions. A self-fulfilling prophecy appears to have been established, leading, first, to a growth in crime measurement and, in turn, to widespread popular consensus that crime itself continues to grow in our society.

By 1911, Robinson was already making the kind of argument that would be used to support the ex- pansion of the data base for crime measurement.l1 The "main differ- ence" between judicial and prison statistics, he argued, was that the former were "far more complete" than the latter. In itself, this was a fairly restrained conclusion about which kind of data was likely to approach a "true" picture of the number or rate of crime. But argu- ments of this kind have had a greater significance, for they have provided a logic for extending the crime data base indefinitely. If judicial statistics are more nearly complete than prison statistics (since not all those convicted of crimes were sentenced to prison), then are not arrest statistics more nearly complete than judicial statistics (since some of those arrested, though presumably guilty, were not convicted)? As one would expect, by 1931, police arrest statistics were compiled statewide in Massachusetts and "for nearly

11. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

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half of the cities over 30,000 inhabi- tants."12

Before arrest statistics could be- come established as the successor to judicial statistics as the source of an authoritative crime measure, the police had developed another, still more inclusive, measure of crime: "offenses known to the police." These were drawn from police reports of offenses they had discovered themselves or of offenses reported to them by citizen complainants. With these statistics, crime could be measured independently of any know- ledge of who was committing the offenses. As early as 1927, at the Convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, it was proposed that police offenses known data be made the primary basis for national crime statistics, and a legal mandate was given to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to begin compiling such data in 1930.13 By 1931, offenses known data were reported for 14 American cities.14

For a while, crime measurement seemed to go into remission. While the FBI tried to encourage more areas to report offenses, the country, caught in the throes of trying to re- cover from the Depression, seemed to lose interest in finding more hidden crime. The nationally reported rates of offenses known for serious crimes declined steadily into World War II.15

A presidential address to the American Sociological Association by Edwin H. Sutherland in 1939 signaled a return to concern for find-

12. National Commission, No. 3: Report on Statistics, p. 87.

13. Ibid., p. 10. 14. Ibid., p. 87. 15. President's Commission, Task Force

Report, pp. 19-20.

ing hidden crime.16 Sutherland's thesis, as developed in a later article,17 was that most of the hidden crime was committed by business- men and professionals in the higher socioeconomic classes. He proposed that crime data include such figures as those for injections against anti- trust violators. While initial resist- ance to Sutherland's proposed ex- tension of crime measurement-as by Paul W. Tappan'8-was strong, there are now signs that acceptance of finding a growth in white-collar crime is coming of age. Reluctance to find widespread criminality among the upper classes of a society is understandable. But now that Americans have shown enough tolerance of such a discovery to force the resignation of a president, the history of measurement of street crime is showing signs of recapitula- ting itself among the higher social strata. To illustrate, a recent article based a report of a sharp rise in white-collar crime on FBI data indicating that the number of white- collar crime convictions increased by 30 percent from the period of January 1972-June 1973 to July 1973-December 1974.19 This new area for the growth of crime is finally beginning to open up to serious attention by specialists in crime measurement.20

16. Edwin H. Sutherland, "White-Collar Criminality," American Sociological Re- view 5 (February 1940), pp. 1-12.

17. Edwin H. Sutherland, "Is 'White- Collar Crime' Crime?," American Socio- logical Review 10 (April 1945), pp. 132- 39.

18. Paul W. Tappan, "Who Is the Crim- inal?," American Sociological Review 12 (February 1947), pp. 96-102.

19. Colman McCarthy, "White Collar Crime," Washington Post, 11 April 1975.

20. At least one other channel has been opened for the growth of crime-that of juvenile delinquency statistics. Suffice it to

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THE GROWTH OF CRIME

Meanwhile, during the decades of the forties and the fifties, the FBI, at that time the leader in the development of national crime statistics, concentrated on trying to get full and reliable offenses known data from law enforcement authorities across the country. Nationally reported rates of offenses known climbed steadily.21 It is possible that people were really committing crimes at ever higher rates. It is also plausible to infer a connection between the assumptions of crime measurement and the upward trend. How, after all, is a law enforcement agency to demonstrate that its offenses known data are more nearly complete without showing increases in the figures recorded?

Though one can only guess at whether the growth of crime in the forties and fifties was at all a product of a self-fulfilling prophecy in the field of crime measurement, particu- lar evidence in support of this infer- ence is available for the decade of the sixties. In 1957, Thorsten Sellin wrote an article that strongly criticized inadequacies in the FBI's sys- tem of crime reporting.22 In response to this criticism, a consultant committee made recommendations for revision of FBI procedures which the latter adopted.23 But the

note that the growth of delinquency figures has been aided dramatically in recent years by the use of self-report measurement, which has made it possible to find delinquent acts committed by practically every adoles- cent. See, for example, Travis Hirschi, Causes of Delinquency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).

21. President's Commission, Task Force Report, pp. 19-20.

22. Thorsten Sellin, "Crime in the United States," Life Magazine 48 (9 September 1957), p. 48.

23. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports: Special Issue

Sellin criticism and the FBI response generated rather than abated attention to the shortcomings of official crime statistics. A wave of articles critical of FBI offenses known data began to appear at the beginning of the sixties.24 Much of the criticism was directed at sup- posed variations in the ways differ- ent law enforcement agencies gathered and compiled their offenses known data, but the criticism that got the most substantial response was that of the incomplete- ness of offenses known data. Law enforcement agencies began making overt efforts to revise their reporting practices to give evidence that their figures were more nearly complete than ever before. The effects of revised reporting practices were particularly dramatic in New York City, where the rate of offenses known to the police was 72 percent higher in 1966 than in 1965.25 The "true" increase in the New York rate was estimated to be 6.5 percent, based on the assumption that the previous trend there had actually remained unchanged. Thus, even where the size of an increase in an offenses known rate strained credulity, crime measurement's self- fulfilling prophecy operated to sup-

(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958).

24. For example, Ronald H. Beattie, "Criminal Statistics in the United States," Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 51 (May-June 1960), pp. 49-65; David J. Pittman and William F. Handy, "Uniform Crime Reporting: Sug- gested Improvements," Sociology and Social Research 46 (January 1962), pp. 135-43; and Marvin E. Wolfgang, "Uniform Crime Reports: A Critical Appraisal," Pennsylvania Law Review 111 (April 1963), pp. 708-38.

25. Bernard Weinraub, "Crime Reports up 72% Here in 1966: Actual Rise Is 6.5%," New York Times, 21 February 1967.

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port the conclusion that the crime rate was increasing, nevertheless.

A survey of recent national offenses known data reveals some interruptions in the operation of the prophecy that crime is growing, but the interruptions appear to be temporary.26 During the administration of President Nixon, efforts were made to demonstrate that crime rates could be reduced through administration policy. The District of Columbia was a primary demonstration area for Nixon's "war on crime" policy, and for several years the official offenses known rates for some serious offenses showed declines. The District of Columbia police were criticized for manufacturing the declines through artifice, such as by reporting burglaries and grand thefts (felonies or serious crimes) as petit thefts (misdemeanors or minor crimes). Suffice it to note that the declines, like Nixon's second term in office, were short-lived. A number of other cities joined the competition, reporting drops in offense rates, which were more than compensated for by their suburban brethren. This anomaly, too, appears to have been temporary, for each year more of these cities have returned to reporting increases in their rates.

The criticism in the early sixties of the inadequacies of official crime data had another effect on crime measurement. A technological innovation, the victim survey, re- sulted. The first victim surveys were commissioned by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice and completed in 1967.27 The victim

26. These data are to be found in Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States: Uniform Crime Reports (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, annual).

27. Albert D. Biderman et al., "Incidence of Crime Victimization," in President's Com-

survey approach has proven to be a major breakthrough in crime measurement. In one victimization study, it has already proven possible to find 10 times the rate of officially reported offenses.28

Typically, respondents in victim surveys are asked to report offenses that have been committed against them during the preceding one-year period. Albert J. Reiss, Jr., tried an experiment which indicates that a substantial potential for the growth of crime still exists within the victim survey approach.29 He had a sample of people interviewed who were known to have reported offenses to the police within the preceding month. Twenty percent of the offenses that had been reported to the police went unreported in the victim survey.

Interpreting the growth of crime measurement in light of the postulated self-fulfilling prophecy, it is safe to project a continued growth of crime for the American future.

mission on Law Enforcement and Adminis- tration of Justice, Field Surveys I: Report on a Pilot Study in the District of Columbia on Victimization and Attitudes Toward Law Enforcement (Washington, D.C.: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1967), ch. 2, pp. 26- 118; Philip H. Ennis, "Crime Victimization in the United States: Report on a National Survey," in President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Field Surveys II (Washington, D.C.: Govern- ment Printing Office, 1967); and Albert J. Reiss, Jr., "Measurement of the Nature and Amount of Crime," in President's Com- mission on Law Enforcement and Adminis- tration of Justice, Field Surveys III: Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 1-183.

28. Paul D. Reynolds, Victimization of the Residents and Their Perceptions of Community Services-1971 (Minneapolis, Minn.: Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities, 1972), p. 49.

29. Reiss, "Measurement of Nature and Amount of Crime," p. 150.

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THE GROWTH OF CRIME

Indeed, given the ingenuity that American crime measurement specialists have displayed in conceptual innovation and technological re- finement, the potential for the growth of crime in our society seems limitless.

A MODEST PROPOSAL

The assumption that it is desirable to lower rates of crime implicitly if not explicitly underlies practically all research and planning in the field of criminal justice. Measures of crime rates were intended at least in part to serve as criteria by which success or failure to meet this objective could be assessed. It has generally been presumed that the measures are independent of the objective. The preceding survey of the history of American crime measurement suggests otherwise: that a general failure to reduce rates of crime has been preordained by the assumptions upon which the development of crime measures has rested.

The problem stems from the belief that all hidden crime must be accounted for before one can know whether crime rates have really been reduced. It has commonly been assumed that the amount of crime that can be found at any time and place is finite-that the limits of defining behavior as crime are determined by the terms of formal legislation. This assumption is tenuous. The limits of change are yet to be seen in perceptions of whether one knows that an act has occurred which fits a statutory definition of a crime. What is perceived as a "suspicion" on one occasion can be perceived as an "established fact" on another. A memory that is perceived as being "dis- torted" on one occasion can be perceived as being "accurate" on

another. An act that is perceived as being an "innocent altercation" on one occasion can be perceived as an "assault" on another. What is perceived as an "act of spite" on one occasion can be perceived as a "theft" on another. The author can testify to having seen such ambiguities arise routinely in the work of police patrolmen.30 The pressure to find more and more hidden crime can be expected to create new ambiguities in the minds of those who might report offenses and to raise the probability that ambiguities will be resolved in favor of making reports. In this sense, the growth of crime measurement is likely to continue to lead to a growth in what is seen as the "real" rates of crime.

English practice indicates that the presumption used to resolve ambiguities underlying police offenses known data need not in- variably favor reporting the highest available rate. American offenses known data on murder and involun- tary manslaughter have long been regarded as the most nearly valid indicator of true crime rates. British Home Office reports on murder, including figures on lesser forms of criminal homicide, stress caution about accepting police figures at face value.31 Police offenses known figures on murder are freely ad- justed in these reports, including an

30. Harold E. Pepinsky, "Police Decisions to Report Offenses" (diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1972).

31. Evelyn Gibson and S. Klein, Home Office Studies in the Causes of Delinquency and the Treatment of Offenders, No. 4: Murder-A Home Office Research Unit Report (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961); and Evelyn Gibson and S. Klein, Home Office Research Studies, No. 3: Murder, 1957-1968-A Home Office Research Report on Murder in England and Wales (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1969).

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average reduction in initial police figures of about 14 percent per year for acquittals at trial-noting, "Deaths initially recorded by the police as murder may turn out not to be the result of crime. .. 32

American officials have no com- parable practice of lowering offense rate figures.

In addition, the increases in American rates that result from a change in data bases, as in the shift from police data to victim survey data, stand to be interpreted as indicating that rates of crime are "really" increasing. It is difficult to isolate the changes due to changes in method of measurement, and the salience of the higher rates tends to be seriously questioned. The logic may be problematic, but in the con- fusion it appears that such rate increases reinforce the confidence of those measuring crime that the rates are, in fact, increasing.

Why not abandon attempts to de- termine real rates of crime? Little would be lost if the attempts are bound to fall short of success. There are rather straightforward ways to lower measured rates of crime if this can be accepted as a desirable objective in itself. The police depart-

32. Gibson and Klein, Home Office Research Studies, No. 3, pp. 1, 8.

ment in Orange, California, sub- stantially lowered the rates of serious offenses known by paying patrolmen to report fewer offenses, without any indication that life in the city was descending into chaos.33 The experience of the pro- motion of the growth of crime by the growth of crime measurement could be put to use in reducing rates of crime; a new prophecy could be con- structed to replace the old, in the hope that the new prophecy would be even remotely as effective in fulfilling itself as the old one has been.

Perhaps this proposed strategy of crime rate reduction is too threaten- ing to pursue. Perhaps pursuit of the strategy presents an unacceptable risk of toleration of wrongful con- duct. But if we are not prepared to accommodate ourselves to this kind of risk, the history of crime measurement in the United States suggests we had better be prepared to face the inevitability of a continued growth of crime. At present, it is hard to conceive of a way out of this dilemma.

33. John M. Greiner, Tying City Pay to Performance: Early Reports on Orange, California, and Flint, Michigan (Washing- ton, D.C.: Labor-Management Relations Service of the National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, United States Conference of Mayors, 1974), pp. 5-16.

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crime and justice in america: 1776-1976 || the growth of crime in the united states

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