By Min Xie, Preeti Chauhan, Michael Rempel, and Jeremy Travis 

This study relies on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and presents trends from 1996 to 2022 in crime victimization, rates at which victims report crimes to the police, confidence in the police, and victims’ use of services in New York City. This is one of two studies falling under the umbrella of the Crossroads Project. Its goal is to trace New York City’s trends in crime victimization, enforcement, incarceration, and racial disparities from the 1990s to the early 2020s in the hopes that empirical data over a long timeframe might provide a much-needed perspective capable of informing future policy. Both of the two resulting reports and a joint executive summary may be found at the project landing page. What is the NCVS, and why is it important for studying crime? Crime data for cities and communities across the country relies primarily on criminal complaints reported to local police agencies. The many crimes that victims never report to law enforcement are omitted. However, by collecting data directly from crime victims, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) can provide estimates of both reported and unreported crime. The NCVS is the world’s largest and oldest national victimization survey (Xie, Lynch, & Lauritsen, 2025). It has provided information on the criminal victimization of the U.S. household population for over 50 years (1973 to present). It surveys persons aged 12 years or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households randomly selected from a stratified multistage cluster sampling design, with the goal of getting an accurate and representative count of crime victimization in the United States (Cantor, 2025). The U.S. Census Bureau administers the interviews for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The primary information from the NCVS includes nonfatal violent crimes (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) and household property crimes (i.e., burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other types of theft), both reported and not reported to the police. Therefore, the estimates for nonfatal violence crimes are by persons, and the estimates for property crimes are by households. The NCVS data is an important complement to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Summary program and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The UCR and NIBRS databases, which rely on crimes reported to the police, are often used to follow crime trends by policymakers, journalists, and the general public, and to guide public safety decision making. But nationwide, the NCVS shows that more than 50% of crimes are NOT reported to the police (Xie, Ortiz Solis, & Chauhan, 2024). This is known as the dark figure of crime and shows that relying on police-recorded crimes provides an incomplete picture of crime trends (Lynch & Addington, 2007). The NCVS also provides critical information such as why the crime was not reported to the police. Much information in the NCVS is not available from the UCR summary program or NIBRS, such as the circumstances of crimes based on the victims’ descriptions, the consequences of the victimizations, the victims’ responses to victimization, and their interaction with the criminal justice or victim service systems or lack thereof. These data are critical to policymakers as they think of responses to crime and how to enhance public safety.  

New York: Data Collaborative for Justice, at John Jay College, 2025. 18p.