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Article 1: Crime Statistics: A Historical Perspective                           

Abstract: Crime statistics, in the form of Uniform Crime Reports, have been collected by the FBI since 1930. A dominant motivation for their collection was to combat the publicity about “crime waves” generated by the press. This paper analyzes the historical development of crime statistics from the standpoint of three questions that first arose over 40 years ago: What kinds of statistics should be collected? Who should collect them? How accurate are they? Current developments in crime statistics, notably the initiation of the National Crime Panel Survey, have affected these three issues markedly.
 

Article 2: The Social Production of Crime Statistics                                   

Abstract: The problems associated with trying to conceptualize and measure crime with crime statistics are widely recognized and well documented. Most often, studies have focused on the technical issues of reliability and validity. Recent analyses have also considered how crime statistics are socially constructed or produced. These studies, however, focused on how such statistics are influenced by the decisions and actions of people who participate in the system of criminal justice and have vested interests in how crime is defined or measured. This paper, in contrast, will demonstrate that actions and decisions of individuals engaged in the production of crime statistics but working without any vested interest in the meaning or measure of crime also have an impact on how crime is conceptualized and measured.