Which of the following is the most common of all serious crimes tracked by the fbi?

Contribute to the Local Criminal Statistical Data

The annual Uniform Crime Reports published by the FBI are based on data generated at the local level. The statistical tracking of the number of various types of crimes in a community, the number of arrests, and the variety of unsolved crimes serves a number of purposes, including possible budget justifications.

On first observation it might appear that the volume of criminal acts and arrests reflects police activity only. However, a percentage of these statistics reflects the activity of the security forces in the community, particularly in certain crimes such as larceny. The percentage could be quite small or substantial, depending on the community and the composition of the local police and security forces. The private security force responsible for maintaining order on a large college campus, for example, might often process as many offenders through the “booking” procedure as the local police agency. In this circumstance, the community served by the private security agency might actually be larger than the one within the jurisdiction of the public law enforcement agency.

The published criminal statistics reflect to some degree the joint effort, but more often than not they reflect the independent efforts of both the public and private sector.

It should be pointed out that the index reflects only “known” crimes or crimes known to the police. Actually, there is a great deal of crime known to the private sector but for a number of reasons it is never reported to the police, such as petty shoplifting cases and large internal larceny matters in which the best interests of the company are served in a recovery of the loss instead of a prosecution with its delays, costs, and doubtful outcome.

External Metrics

External metrics focus on society-wide measurements, such as those pertaining to crimes, fires, accidents, and disasters. These measurements help enterprises make business decisions on the geographic locations for business investment, the types of insurance to purchase, and loss prevention, among other decisions.

There are many sources of external metrics. As examples, the US Department of Justice publishes crime statistics and the US Department of State publishes information on terrorism and safety in other countries. Both sources are accessible on the Internet. Risk management and insurance firms offer services for a fee that estimate risks from a variety of adverse events worldwide. As with internal metrics, methodological problems exist with external metrics.

Next, we look at specific external metrics as an avenue to assess risks. An emphasis is placed on the risk of crimes, fires, accidents, and disasters because protection practitioners have expended considerable time and resources on these problems.

The Extent of the Problem

As per the FBI UCR, the number of reported sexual assaults in the United States is presented in Table 1. Both the number and the rate of reported rapes declined throughout most of the 1990s and 2000s reaching a low in 2011. It is also well known that the number of reported rapes is significantly lower than the actual number. In 1999, for example, the BJS estimated that there were over 141 000 cases of sexual assault, 58% more than the number actually reported to the police.

Table 1. Number of reported sexual assaults (FBI Uniform Crime Report)

In one study directly relevant to the prevalence issue, data from analysis of approximately 1200 urine specimens were collected (ElSohly and Salamone, 1999). The protocol involved a random collection of cases submitted by forensic science/toxicology labs nationwide to the investigators, specifically in order to screen for and identify alcohol and ‘date-rape’ and other drugs. Approximately 60% of all samples tested were positive for one or more drugs. GHB was detected in about 4% of samples. Nearly 8.2% of the specimens had confirmed benzodiazepines, but flunitrazepam was seen only in few cases.

A systematic study to estimate the prevalence of DFSA was conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago (Juhascik et al., 2007). A total of 144 sexual assault complainants at four clinics in different parts of the United States were registered anonymously facilitating the complainants to provide their urine and hair specimens, and answer questions about suspected drugging, drug use, and the sexual assaults. Urine and hair specimens were tested for 45 drugs, including ethanol, pharmacologically capable of inducing sedation, amnesia, or impairment of judgment. Analytical test results were used to estimate the proportion of subjects, and the proportion of all complainants to the clinic in the same time period, who were victims of DFSA. Overall, 43% of the cases involving 144 subjects, and 7% of the total 859 complainants in four jurisdictions during the same time period, were characterized as DFSA. Subjects underreported their use of drugs.

Methodological Problems with UCR Data

One of the most problematic aspects of the UCR data collection process is classifying, or taking the numerous offense titles employed by jurisdictions across the country and grouping the incidents of these categories into the appropriate standardized crime categories used by the UCR. For example, legal definitions for the crime of rape vary greatly by jurisdiction. Some laws require forced penile–vaginal penetration for a rape to occur, whereas others stipulate that other types of offensive intimate contact constitute rape. Jurisdictions may require some degree of physical “resistance” on the part of the victim for it to be considered a rape, and some may or may not allow males to be considered victims of rape. Finally, some jurisdictions may completely abandon the term of rape and classify these acts under categories such as sexual assault in the first, second, or third degree. Regardless of the legal strategy employed by the local jurisdiction, when reporting crime data to the UCR the local jurisdiction must conform to the UCR definition of the crime. This process of classification, discussed briefly earlier, can be difficult for police to accomplish and is certain to introduce some error into UCR data. However, the availability of technology and software developed for the automated reporting of UCR and NIBRS data may help to manage these problems somewhat in the future.

The process of scoring, the counting of offenses after they are classified, can also be problematic because offenses may not be counted if they meet certain conditions. When scoring, the UCR requires that for crimes against property (i.e., burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) one offense is counted for each “distinct operation,” defined as a criminal incident that is separate in time and place. In the instance of a property crime that victimizes more than one person at the same time and in the same place (e.g., the burglary of three housemates), the distinct operation criteria requires that each of the persons offended against is not counted as a separate crime.

Conversely, for crimes against persons (i.e., criminal homicide, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) each offense that has a victim is counted as one offense. For example, if a person were to murder two people in a robbery, each murder would be recorded by the UCR because there are two victims. However, although both of the homicides would be recorded, not even one robbery would be recorded. This is because scoring must also take into account the hierarchy rule, one of the most frequently discussed and debated issues with regard to counting procedures used by the UCR.

The hierarchy rule states that in a multiple-offense situation (e.g., robbery–homicide), after classifying all the Part I offenses, only the most serious offense should be scored and the rest ignored. Thus, in the previous example, each homicide is recorded but each robbery is ignored. This obviously results in a systematic underreporting of crime, but it also raises concerns about differential levels of compliance with the hierarchy rule among reporting agencies. The only important exception to the hierarchy rule occurs for the crime of arson, which is always reported, even in multiple-offense situations. It is important that UCR data are used with these issues in mind because, as noted by Mosher et al., it is likely that the index crimes are subject to considerable variability in counting and scoring across reporting agencies.

Additional methodological criticism of the UCR addresses the extent to which the crime measures used by the UCR are flawed. Criticisms have been lodged against the UCR for aggregating offenses that are conceptually dissimilar into a single category (e.g., shoplifting and purse-snatching), excluding important supplementary information about the crimes (e.g., the victim–offender relationship), and including attempted crimes along with completed crimes. Comment has also been made on the fact that the UCR uses estimates of population counts in noncensus years when calculating crime rates, which can be problematic particularly in times of rapid population growth or decline. Finally, some concern has been raised over the size of the sampling error and sampling bias that may be introduced when the UCR generates crime estimates for those areas where agencies were either unable or unwilling to provide data to the UCR.

3 Epidemiological Data on Drug-facilitated Crime in the USA

The US Department of Justice publishes annually the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) which itemizes the number of forcible rapes reported to law enforcement agencies throughout the United States. However, these statistics are limited3 because they exclude forcible rape, copulation and sodomy, statutory rapes and rapes accomplished without force when victims are incapacitated.39 It appears that the number of incidents is possibly 10 times higher3 and that about one in six women in the United States is a victim of rape or attempted rape. These data are provided by national victimization surveys sponsored by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and Centers for Disease Controls and Prevention (CDC). Regarding the specific DFSA case, it is observed in most interviews that the victims are reluctant to make police reports. Like acts of sexual violence against women, crimes against males are highly underreported to the police.3,4

In 1999, ElSohly and Salamone published the first comprehensive study attempting to evaluate the incidence of DFSA.40 They reported the results of 1179 urine sample analyses from 49 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. The states sending the most samples were California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, and Massachusetts. Methods used were immunoassays, GC-MS (especially for flunitrazepam and GHB) and GC-FID (ethanol). Over 61% of all samples were positive for one or more drugs, including ethanol. ElSohly and Salamone’s paper was severely criticized5,41 because: a) the urine specimens were screened by a laboratory funded by Hofmann-La Roche for flunitrazepam metabolites (coming from Rohypnol®, Hofmann-La Roche Laboratories) at a very low concentration and other benzodiazepines were not screened at such low levels, and so their prevalences could have been underestimated, and b) the cut-off used to differentiate endogenous from exogenous GHB was too low, so the prevalence of GHB was also underestimated.42 Despite this bias, this study first demonstrated at a large scale that DFSA involves a wide range of drugs, not just those that were popularized by the media (i.e. GHB and Rohypnol®). The prevalence of ethanol was very high (38%), followed by cannabis, cocaine, benzodiazepines, amphetamines and GHB.

In 2001, the ElSohly combined his results with those from Hindmarch43 and updated their database in order to obtain an up-to-date database containing 3303 urine samples collected over a 4-year period (1996–2000)44. Seventy-three percent of samples were reported to have been collected within the first 24 hours after the incident. Alcohol, either alone or in combination with other drugs, was by far the commonest substance found, being present in 67% of samples. Cannabis was the second most prevalent drug, present in 30.3% of samples. The remaining positive drugs findings were composed of benzodiazepines (4.8%), cocaine (2.8%), amphetamines (1.9%), opiates (0.7%) and propoxyphene (0.3%).

Another study reported of a total of 2003 urine specimens from victims of sexual assaults.37 Analyses were conducted by GC-MS (1997–1999). Nearly two-thirds of the samples contained alcohol and/or drugs; the predominant substances found were alcohol, present in 63% of cases, and marijuana, present in 30%. A substantial subset of the specimens was found to contain other illicit substances, frequently in combination. GHB and flunitrazepam were each detected in less than 3% of the positive samples.

After the publication of important papers on analytical developments,45–47 Juhascik estimated the occurrence of DFSA cases in the USA.15 Specimens collected from individuals, who presented in four clinics (Texas, California, Minnesota and Washington) with complaints of being sexually assaulted, were tested for 45 different drugs and alcohol. Overall, 43% of 144 subjects (7% of 859 complainants) could be classified as DFSA cases.

Important conclusions were a) that subjects underreported their use of drugs, and b) that the true proportion of DFSA cases is underreported because of the frequently large timespan between the incident and reporting.

In 2007, interviews conducted at the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center on 5001 women drew the conclusion that, more specifically in term of DFSA, the vast majority of cases involved alcohol (>95%), while drugs alone were involved in less than 5% of cases. Alcohol combined with drugs was estimated at a level of 15–25% of the cases.5

As stated by Arbanel earlier,3 there is currently no systematic effort under way to measure exactly the prevalence and incidence of DFCs/DFSAs at a nationwide scale in the USA. Moreover, in most survey research designed to measure the scope of sexual violence, DFSAs have not been included.3,39 The FBI laboratory collects data and adds them the Uniform Crime Report. Unfortunately, it seems that DFSAs are lumped with all rapes and DFCs with robberies (M. LeBeau, FBI laboratory. Personal communication). However, papers from McCauley, Kilpatrick et al. (Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston) together with the National Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center attempted to identify the scope, nature and consequences of rape of a number of women in the USA and in college settings.48–50 These surveys are conducted at a national level and this may help largely to improve the knowledge of prevalence of DFSAs. A national protocol for sexual assault medical forensic examination (adults/adolescents) has just been published by the Office on Violence Against Women from the NDJ.51 Moreover, the clinical report from the American Academy of Pediatrics on “The Evaluation of Sexual Abuse in Children” states that data collected must include patient history of DFSA: this may help also to evaluate the prevalence of such crimes.52

National Law Enforcement Records

Each year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) publishes the Uniform Crime Reports which consists, in part, of a detailed analysis of eight major crime categories covering jurisdictions of various sizes in the United States. The UCR Program collects statistics on the number of offenses known to law enforcement. In the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS), there are eight crimes, or Part I offenses (murder and nonnegligent homicide, forcible rape), robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, larceny-theft, and arson) to be reported to the UCR Program. The FBI collects information on these offenses because they are serious crimes, they occur with regularity in all areas of the country, and they are likely to be reported to police. While there are limitations with the UCR, the UCR data are the most comprehensive and consistently collected data on crime in the United States. In most cases, analysis of UCR data is the first step, and additional in-depth analysis of crime in local areas is required to understand the nature and context of crime problems.

In recent years, the FBI has been moving from the UCR system’s summary-based measurement of crime to incident-based measures via the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). While the UCR is an aggregate system that includes the total number of crimes, NIBRS collects details on each single crime incident—as well as on separate offenses within the same incident—including information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, and property involved in crimes. Unlike data reported through the UCR Program’s traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS)—an aggregate monthly tally of crimes—NIBRS provides circumstances and context for crimes including specific location and time of day. Plans are for the UCR Program’s traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS) to be phased out and transition to a NIBRS-only data collection by January 1, 2021 (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 2018b).

To measure the crime rate, a forensic criminologist can compute the volume of offenses experienced against the population of the area which results in a certain number of crimes occurring in that area. Within this information, a forensic criminologist can compare crime across scales, for example, neighborhood, intersection, or city. Whenever comparing crimes between two cities, however, the researcher must take the fact that city A may have more assaults than city B simply because there are more people in city A. To control for disparate population size, a forensic criminologist normally determines the crime rate per 100,000 people. The simple formula which divides the number of crimes by the number of people and multiplies by 100,000 will allow a forensic criminologist to compare crime rates across cities.

There are two issues that a forensic criminologist should be aware of when determining crime rates. First, using residential census data, many more people may be in any given town on a daily basis because they go there to work. Second, the unit of analysis can vary across locales. When comparing burglary rates between cities, for example, it may be appropriate to use number of dwelling units rather than the population in the denominator (Boggs, 1965; Harries, 1990). That is, when comparing burglary and other nonviolent crimes across cities, it may be more appropriate for a forensic criminologist to differentiate between crime density (crimes per land area) and victimization risk (crimes per target).

The Extent of the Problem

The number of reported sexual assaults in the USA, for example, according to FBI UCR, is presented in Figure 1. Both the number and the rate of reported rapes declined throughout most of the 1990s, reaching a low in 1999. It is also well known that the number of reported rapes is significantly lower than the actual number. In 1999, for example, the BJS estimated that there were over 141 000 cases of sexual assault, 58% more than the number actually reported to the police.

At present, there are no reliable data or estimates of the fraction of sexual assaults – actual or reported – that involve drugs typically associated with sexual assault. The only published data directly relevant to the prevalence issue are based on the analysis of 1200 urine specimens from a random collection of cases submitted by forensic science or toxicology labs nationwide to the investigators, specifically in order to screen for and identify alcohol and “date-rape” and other drugs. Approximately 60% of all samples tested were positive for one or more drugs including alcohol. GHB was detected in 4% of samples. About 8.2% of the specimens had confirmed benzodiazepines, but flunitrazepam was only seen in a few cases. A systematic study to estimate the prevalence of DFSA is currently being conducted at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The project is designed to gather preliminary data on DFSA practices in a representative sample of US jurisdictions. In this complicated but important protocol, 130 actual sexual assault complainants in five separate and widely scattered jurisdictions are recruited into the study to provide a urine specimen at the time they report the assault, and both urine and hair specimens approximately a week later. Results of analysis for relevant drugs in the volunteer subject population will be compared with results from a control population matched for age cohort, gender, and ethnic group. The victims remain anonymous to the investigators. All results are confidential.

Reporting at the Federal Level

After much study in the 1920s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) instituted the Uniform Crime Report in 1929. The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is a database of local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement statistics. The report details the number of incidents, offenses, victims, and offenders in three principle categories [1]:

Crimes against persons, which include

Assault

Homicide

Kidnapping

Forcible sex offenses, and

Non-forcible sex offenses

Crimes against property, which include

Arson

Bribery

Burglary

Counterfeiting

Destruction

Embezzlement

Extortion

Fraud

Theft

Motor vehicle theft

Robbery

Stolen property

Crimes against Society, which include

Drug offenses

Gambling

Pornography

Prostitution

Weapons violations

Workplace and its intertwined offense of domestic violence are nowhere to be found. As was illustrated in the death of Amanda Brown, many instances of workplace violence are the result of domestic violence that spills over onto the job site, so the two issues are very closely related.

The FBI’s UCR breaks out sex offenses into two categories: forcible and non-forcible. Theft of material and financial property are expanded to seven line items: burglary, embezzlement, fraud, theft, motor vehicle theft, robbery, and stolen property. But workplace violence is nowhere to be found within the report. And, on September 17, 2014, FBI director James B. Comey announced that the FBI would add cruelty to animals to the national UCR program as a unique category of offense to be reported in the “Crimes against Society” section. [2] But workplace and domestic violence are nowhere to be found within the “Crimes against Persons” category.

While there is no law enforcement repository of workplace violence definitions and statistics, there is a federal regulatory body in the United States that collects data and investigates an organization’s state of preparedness (and assesses fines for a lack thereof), which is the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, more commonly referred to as OSHA. OSHA defines workplace violence as follows: “Workplace violence is any act or threat of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, or other threatening disruptive behavior that occurs at the work site. It ranges from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and even homicide.” [3]

The FBI’s UCR for 2012 (the last year available at the time of this writing) shows that there were 1,214,462 instances of crimes against persons (assaults, homicides, kidnappings, and sex offenses) in the United States. [4] Perhaps there are just not enough occurrences of workplace violence to justify breaking it out into its own line item on the UCR. However, OSHA’s website reports that “nearly 2 million American workers report having been victims of workplace violence each year. Unfortunately, many more cases go unreported. The truth is, workplace violence can strike anywhere, anytime, and no one is immune.” [5] Clearly there is a gap between the data reported by the FBI and OSHA. Let’s clear up at least some of the disparity:

The FBI’s UCR shows arrests whereas OSHA’s data includes everything reported to OSHA and many of those incidents are handled within the reporting business without anyone being arrested or without any notification to the police.

The FBI’s UCR details arrests for physical crimes against persons (assault, homicide, etc.) whereas OSHA is cataloging all incidents reported to them of physical violence, harassment, intimidation, threats, and verbal abuse. Therefore OSHA is collecting data from a larger pool of incidents than is reported and included in the FBI’s report.

There are those who dismiss OSHA’s statistics stating that OSHA’s workplace violence data is inflated because it also includes other violations of the law in which a worker may be placed in danger, such as robbery, which is captured in the “Crimes against Property” section of the UCR. However, most all business robberies are reported to the police and this category has not reached 100,000 incidents in each of the UCR for the last two years. [6] Therefore the number of robberies in the United States is not causing statistically significant inflation in the workplace violence data reported by OSHA.

According to the FBI, the goal of the UCR is to “generate reliable information for law enforcement administration, operation and management” as well as to detect emerging social trends in criminal or other antisocial behavior. [7] In that regard it would be beneficial to know how many of those arrests for assaults and homicides were related to workplace and domestic violence so that the proper social, legislative, and law enforcement resources could be marshaled against this trend. This should not be difficult as it would be a programming change to the reporting police department’s existing computerized reporting system, asking the arresting officer if the offense being reported involved workplace or domestic violence.

19.2 Legal definitions of sexual violence

The following definitions of sexually violent acts are a compilation of terms used by a number of reporting groups, including the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), and The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The definitions are taken from The Bureau of Justice Report entitled, “Sex Offenses and Offenders” (Lawrence Greenfeld, February 1997, NCJ-163392, pp. 31–33).

The carnal knowledge of a person forcibly and/or against his or her will, or in which the victim is incapable of giving consent because of age, mental status, or physical incapacity. Assaults and attempts to commit rape by force or threat of force are also included; however, statutory rape without force and other sex offenses are excluded.

The carnal knowledge of a person without force or threat of force in which the person is below the statutory age of consent.

Oral or anal sexual intercourse with another person, forcibly and against his or her will, or in which the person is unable to consent because of age, mental or physical incapacity.

Assault in which the offender uses an instrument or object to unlawfully penetrate the genitalia or anal opening against a victim's will.

Touching the private parts of another person against his or her will for the purpose of sexual gratification.

Non-forcible intercourse between persons who are related to one another and would not legally be permitted to marry.

Fondling, indecent liberties, immoral practices, molestation and other indecent behaviors with children.

Testimonial evidence

Obviously the main topic of this book is the collection of testimonial evidence through investigative interviewing. Most, if not all, of the offenses cataloged in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report require investigative interviewing of victims, witnesses, and suspects. Most of the evidence presented during the prosecution of Part I and Part II offenses was obtained in an interview or interrogation.

There are legal means available to assist both public and private investigators in searching out all forms of evidence that will reveal the truth. Subpoenas, for example, help investigators collect evidence without resorting to illegal methods.

As this book points out, the investigator’s major job is to persuade the interviewee to cooperate long enough to reveal truthful information about the crime under investigation. To this end, investigators of all kinds must cultivate professional attitudes and techniques that promote communication and cooperation. Most interviewees will acquiesce to requests for information, but they need encouragement from the investigator. There is always some resistance to an investigator’s inquiries. Some people believe that the degree of resistance depends on the nature of the offense under investigation. My thought is that the degree of resistance is a reflection of the interviewee’s personality, the interviewer’s attitude, and the qualities the interviewer brings to bear on the interview.

Are people more likely to refuse to cooperate with a private investigation than with a police investigation? Certainly, people perceive less of a threat from private investigations. Most consider losing a job to be less damaging than being fined or going to jail. Employees are expected to cooperate in reasonable inquiries undertaken by company management. The refusal to cooperate in an investigation is often regarded by management as insubordination and sufficient cause for dismissal. But it does not prove that the employee is guilty.

Occasionally the greater threat of a police investigation works to obscure rather than reveal the truth. Because of the fear that a police interview can inspire, interviewees feel pressured to provide answers that they sense the investigator wants—and thus lead the police to a wrongful arrest. It can be difficult for police investigators to discover the truth while simultaneously protecting the rights of the alleged victims and the accused. There is a need for comprehensive training in interviewing at the beginning and throughout a police officer’s career.