NCJ Number
72874
Date Published
1969
Length
8 pages
Annotation
An alternative index system to that used in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is demonstrated in a comparison of robbery trends in Philadelphia from 1960 through 1966.
Abstract
The system of scoring criminal offenses described in 'The Measurement of Delinquency' by Sellin and Wolfgang produced results that differ from statistics based on the indexes used in the UCR. This study scored 1,722 robberies known to the police between January 1960 and December 1966, a 10 percent sample, according to the Sellin-Wolfgang (SW) and URC indexes. Different and sometimes contradictory trends resulted, because the SW index considers the injury and theft components of a robbery which are negatively correlated with one another. In reality, cases of injury have fluctuated according to total robberies whereas the number of simple thefts has remained relatively stable over the years. Specific juvenile delinquency rates as assessed by the SW and UCR indexes also show dissimilar trend profiles which can be explained by the breakdown of the SW index into injury and theft elements. The SW index shows how increases in injury from 1962 to 1966 impact the seriousness per event and offender statistics. This contradicts the common hypothesis that juvenile behavior in robberies does not involve serious violence. The SW index can assess crime trends more accurately because it takes into account both the quality and quantity of the crime and should be used to supplement the UCR system. Footnotes, graphs, annd tables are provided. For related documents, see NCJ 72869-73.