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1 Herbert Koppel, Lifetime Likelihood of Victimization 1 (1987)

handle is hein.death/liflv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics Bureau of Justice Statistics Technical Report Lifetime Likelihood of Victimization by Herbert Koppel BJS Analyst This report provides estimates of the likelihood that a person will become a victim of crime during his or her life- time, or that a household will be vic- timized during a 20-year period. This contrasts with the conventional use of a 1-year period in measuring crime and criminal victimization. Most promi- nently, the National Crime Survey (NCS) surveys a sample of U.S. house- holds and publishes annual victimization rates, and the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) provide annual rates of crimes reported to the police. Annual victimization rates Annual victimization rates alone do not convey the full impact of crime as it affects people. No one would express his or her concern by saying, I am ter- ribly afraid of being mugged between January and December of this year. People are worried about the possibility that at some time in their lives they will be robbed or raped or assaulted, or their homes will be burglarized. Annual rates can provide a false sense of security by masking the real impact of crime. Upon hearing that the homicide rate is about 8 to 10 per 100,000 population, one feels safe; after all, I chance in 10,000 is not very frightening. Actuallj however at recent homicide rates about Lppyery 133Americans will become a murder I CTi7ra'b males the roprtioIL. -estimt to be 1 of ev 30. Similarly, while 16 out of 10,000 women March 1987 The Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Survey provides annual victimization rates based on counts of the number of crimes reported and not reported to police in the United States. These rates are based on interviews twice a year with about 101,000 persons in approximately 49,000 nationally representative households. Those annual rates, while of obvious utility to policymakers, researchers, and statisticians, do not convey to American citizens the full impact of crime on them nor do they answer a critical question for each individual: What is the possibility that I will be a crime victim? This technical report is designed to shed light on this question. Steven R. Schlesinger Director are rape victims annually, the lifetime chances of suffering a rape are much greater. Certainly, annual rates are useful. A 1-year period is probably optimum for researchers, statisticians, and plan- ners. It encompasses exactly one cycle of seasonal variation. It is long enough to smooth out the impact of extraordi- nary events (such as a mass murder in a small city) and to allow time for col- lecting and analyzing data. On the other hand, a 1-year period is short enough to show changes and trends in crime rates. The problem lies with people's perception of the meaning of annual rates with respect to their own lives. If the Earth revolved around the sun in 180 days, all of our annual crime rates would be halved, but we would not be safer. Calculating lifetime victimization rates For this report, lifetime likelihoods of victimization were calculated from NCS annual victimization rates and life tables published by the National Center for Health Statistics.2 The probability that a person will be victimized at a particular age basically depends upon (a) the probability that the person is still alive at that age and (b) the prob- ability that a person of that age will be victimized. The lifetime likelihood of personal victimization is derived from the probabilities of being victimized at the various ages that constitute a life- time. A similar method is used for cal- culating the long-term likelihood of crimes against households. Because of the assumptions involved in the calculations and because the data derive from a sample survey, the num- bers presented in this report are estimates only; they should be inter- preted only as indications of approxi- mate magnitude, not as exact mea- sures. Essentially they are calculated values of lifetime risk rather than des- criptions of what has been observed. For the purposes of this report, a lifetime begins at age 12. This is dic- tated by the data available from the NCS, which does not cover persons younger than 12 years old. Also, 1@

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