Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 70 Article 16 Issue 4 Winter Winter 1979 Estimation of Individual Crime Rates from Arrest Records Alfred Blumstein Jacqueline Cohen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons Recommended Citation Alfred Blumstein, Jacqueline Cohen, Estimation of Individual Crime Rates from Arrest Records, 70 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 561 (1979) This Criminology is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. 9901-4169/79/7004-0.561502.00/0 THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 70, No. 4 Copyright 0 1979 by Northwestern University School of Law Irintdin f.S.A. ESTIMATION OF INDIVIDUAL CRIME RATES FROM ARREST RECORDS* ALFRED BLUMSTEIN** AND JACQUELINE COHEN*** INTRODUCTION and longer imprisonment for offenders with prior criminal records. But if individual crime rates de- This paper addresses patterns of individual crim- inality, a matter of fundamental concern for un- crease as a criminal career progresses, there are derstanding and controlling crime. Despite an fewer crime-reduction benefits gained from inca- enormous volume of research into the causes and pacitating criminals already well into their crimi- prevention of crime, very little is known about the nal careers, than from incapacitating those with no progress of the individual criminal career. In par- prior criminal record. Clearly then, evaluating the ticular, neither the number of crimes an individual crime control effectiveness of various incapacita- commits each year, the individual crime rate, nor tion strategies requires information about the pat- the changes in that rate as a person ages and/or terns of individual career criminality. accumulates a criminal record is known. Such The fact that we lack this basic knowledge about knowledge about individual criminal careers is so fundamental a variable reflects the enormous basic to our understanding of individual criminal- difficulties of measuring individual crime rates. ity, and in particular, to our understanding of how These difficulties arise because the crimes an indi- vidual commits are not directly observable. There various social factors operate on the individual either to encourage or to inhibit criminal activity. are, however, two approaches available for esti- Basic knowledge about individual criminality mating individual crime rates. One uses self-reports also has immediate practical import for developing obtained from offenders; the other involves an effective crime control policies. For example, inca- analysis of recorded arrest histories. Each approach pacitation-or physically preventing the crimes of has its limitations, but using both approaches on an offender (e.g., through incarceration)-has independent data sets may yield the best estimates emerged as a popular crime control strategy. But of individual crime rates. the benefits derived from incapacitation in terms Self-reports are subject to inevitable response of the number of crimes prevented will vary biases arising from simple memory recall difficul- greatly, depending on the magnitude of the indi- ties or from deliberate efforts to mislead." Analysis vidual's crime rate; the higher an individual's of presumably more reliable arrest histories is not crime rate, the more crimes that can be averted without problems. For example, various assump- through his incapacitation. t tions about the arrest process must be invoked in One incapacitative strategy calls for more certain order to infer conclusions about unobserved crimes from observed arrests.3 In this paper, arrest histories will be analyzed in * The research for this article was supported under order to uncover patterns of individual arrest rates Grant #MH28437 of the National Institute of Mental during criminal careers. The possibility of using Health, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. the results to draw inferences about individual ** Eric Jonsson Professor, School of Urban & Public Affairs, Carnegie-Mellon University; Ph.D. Cornell Uni- crime rates will be explored using various assump- versity, 1961; M.A. University of Buffalo, 1954; B. Eng. tions about the relationship between crime rates Phys. Cornell University, 1951. *** Research Associate, Urban Systems Institute, Car- 2 A. Reiss, Survey of Self-Reported Delicts (March 17, negie-Mellon University; Ph.D. candidate Carnegie-Mel- 1972) (unpublished work for the Dep't of Sociology, Yale lon Uniaversity; M.S. University of Pittsburgh, 1970; B.S. University), provides a comprehensive review of the prob- University of Pittsburgh, 1966. lems associated with self-report techniques. 1 See, e.g., Shinnar & Shinnar, The Effects of the Criminal 3One of these assumptions is that false arrests are Justice System on the Control of Crime: A Quantitative Approach, relatively rare, so that arrests are indeed directly linked 9 LAW & Soc'v REV. 581 (1975), and Cohen, The Inca- to crimes committed. Another is that the probability of pacitatire Effect of Imprisonment: A Critical Review of the arrest for a crime is the same for all offenders. This is a Literature, in DETERRENCE AND INCAPACITATION: ESTIMAT- strong prior assumption that ignores the possibility of a ING THE EFFECTS OF CRIMINAL SANCTIONS ON CRIME RATES core of highly professional criminals who commit crimes 187 (1978), for a development of the relationship between at a high rate, but who have low probabilities of arrest individual crime rates and incapacitative effects. for a crime. BLUMSTEIN AND COttEN [Vol. 70 2500 2000 3000 1500 2500 1000 2000 ... 1965 1500 xxxxx xxx 1976 500 xx 1000 xxxx° 500 1o 2b io 4b 56 6 76 Age FIGURE 1 Population Arrest Rates by Age in 1965 and 1976 (Arrests for Index Crimes per 100,000 Population)* * The 1965 arrest rates are from the PRESIDENT'S COMM'N ON LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE, THE CHALLENGE OF CRIME IN A FREE SOCIETY 56 (1967). The number of reported arrests for 1976 are from FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS: 1976 Table 32 (1977). Population estimates for 1976 are available in the U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, CURRENT POPULATION REPORTS, SERIES P-25, No. 643 (1977). Not all police agencies report arrests to the FBI; in 1976, arrests were reported for an estimated population of 175,499,000, or 82.6 percent of the estimated total population of 212,420,000 in 1976. The arrest rates per population each age are estimated from the ratio of reported arrests to 82.6 percent of the total population in each age group. This amounts to an assumption that the age distribution of the population in the jurisdictions reporting to the FBI is essentially the same as the age distribution of the total population in 1976. and the apprehension process. The estimates of major source of data on adult careers is the FBI individual crime rates derived here from arrest Careers in Crime File. Some analysis of this data histories then will be compared to estimates gen- is published in the staff report of the President's erated from the analysis of self-reports. Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Vi- olence.7 Even these studies address only limited PRIOR RESEARCH ON CRIMINAL CAREERS aspects of a criminal career, principally the pat- Prior research on criminal careers is largely lim- terns of crime-type switching between arrests. ited to case studies and biographical or autobio- There is also some attention to variations in crim- graphical sketches which can not be considered inal activity with age, but the analyses are usually characterizations of the typical offender. 4 The ma- restricted to the percentage distribution of total jor exceptions are the Gluecks' longitudinal studies arrests over the different age categories and the of criminal careers in the 1920's s and the Wolfgang arrest rate per total population at different ages. study of delinquency in a birth cohort.6 Another These statistics indicate a high incidence of arrests for teenagers. Figure 1, for example, shows that ' Some of the classics among these studies are E. while population arrest rates have changed in ab- BOOTH, STEALING THROUGH LIFE (1929), J. MARTIN, MY solute magnitude over time (almost doubling be- LIFE IN CRIME: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PROFESSIONAL THIEF (1952), C.R. SHAW, THE JACK ROLLER: A DELIN- tween 1965 and 1976), the same pattern has per- QUENT Boy's OWN STORY (1930), C.R. SHAW, THE NAT- sisted for the relative magnitudes of the different URAL HISTORY OF A DELINQUENT CAREER (1931), and E. age groups, with fifteen to seventeen year-olds hav- SUTHERLAND, THE PROFESSIONAL THIEF (1937). ing the highest arrest rates per population of any S S. GLUECK & E. GLtEcK, LATER CRIMINAL CAREERS (1937); S. GLUECK & E. GLuECK, JUVENILE DELINQUENTS age group. s GROWN-UP (1940) [both studies are hereinafter cited as The Glueck studies found a steady decrease in GLUECK STUDIESJ. 6 M. WOLFGANG, R. FIGLIO & T. SELI.IN, DELINQUENCY 7 D. MULVIHILL, M. TUMIN with L. CURTIS, CRIMES OF IN A BIRTH COHORT (1972) [hereinafter cited as WoiF- VIOLENCE (1969). GANG]. ' GLUECK STUDIES, note 5 supra. ESTIMATION OF INDIVIDUAL CRIME RATES 04 - Probability 160,000 .03 ....... Population 140.000 120,000 100,000 .02 80,000 0 60,000 04 .01 40,000 20,000 I I 40"I 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 FIGURE 2 Incidence of First Arrests by Age * Source: Belkin, Blumstein & Glass, Recidivism as a Feedback Process: An Analytical Model and Empirical Validation, I J, CRIM. JUST. 7 (1973). ** The number of new offenders is estimated by applying the probability of first arrest by age to the population estimates for each age in 1976., U.S. BUREAU OF THE CENSUS, CURRENT POPULATION REPORTS, SERIES P-25, No.