Crime Definition, Crime Measurement, and Victim Surveys.

Although victims surveys can generate in formation about characteristics of victims. precursors of victimization, effectiveness of resistance, victim offender interaction, effects of crime on the victims and police response. current research has hardly begun to mine their potential.. Much of the underutilization and misinterpretation victim surveys can be understood in light of their original objective: to measure the `dark figure' of crime. Victimization estimates were originally intended to intended to index all occurrences of crime, both crimes that become known to the police and those that do not. Because victims-Survey data and police data are products Of numerous definitional decision made by victims. other citizens, and the police. some types of crime are likely to he captured by both data .sources. some by only one, and some by neither. Thus victim surveys do not simply reveal more crimes than police statistics: they capture different crime. These very difference makes victim-survey data especially valuable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]