National Crime Victimization Survey

Okay, Blaps.

A c- a c- [laughs] according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that 3.4 million people ages 16 and or older were stalking victims in 2019, 1.3% of the population.

What-

That out, that-

So there, there are two different types of numbers out there.

There's ones done by the National Crime Victimization Survey, which show anything...

The oldest surveys would show about sixty-four thousand defensive gun uses, and then more recently, uh, about a hundred and twenty-six thousand.

And they came to some average of a hundred and eight in their report.

The other surveys basically showed anything from like five hundred thousand to three point seven million.

The five hundred thousand, which the National Academy, uh, doesn't deal with or doesn't mention, just involved only handguns.

Um, and, uh, you know, so, you know, they basically kind of inaccurately or misleadingly, uh, picked the numbers from the National Academy of Sciences report, kind of, you know, uh, uh, rounded down the lowest estimate there, uh, from the National Crime Victimization Survey, and then kind of just chopped off, uh, kind of the top part of the estimates for, uh, uh, for the n- national surveys that directly asked about defensive gun uses.

And so my complaint was, you know, I'm glad that they put it back, but, uh, somebody over at the CDC ought to make sure that the, what they have there is, uh, is accurate.

Malik Aziz, National Chair of the National Black Police Association, NBPA, reminded the task force that the NBPA not only urges all departments to meet the demographics of the community in which they serve by maintaining a plan of action to recruit and retain police officers of color, but also he has called for the Department of Justice to collect the annual demographic statistics from the 18,000 police agencies across the nation.

it is not enough to mandate diversity he stated but it becomes necessary to diversify command ranks in departments that have historically failed to develop and or promote qualified and credentialed officers to executive and command ranks pillar two five point one action item the bureau of justice statistics should add additional demographic questions to the law enforcement management and administrative statistics lemas survey in order to meet the intent of this recommendation pillar two part six recommendation law enforcement agencies should be encouraged to collect maintain and analyze demographic data on all detentions stops frisks searches summons and arrests this data should be disaggregated by school and non-school contacts The BJS periodically conducts the Police Public Contact Survey, a supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey.

The most recent survey, released in 2013, asked a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents aged 16 or older about experiences with police during the prior 12 months.

but these surveys do not reflect what is happening every day at the local level when police interact with members of the communities they serve more research and tools along the lines of lori friedel's two thousand four publication by the numbers a guide for analyzing race data from vehicle stops To help local agencies collect and analyze their data, understand the importance of context to the analysis and reporting process, and establish benchmarks resulting from their findings would improve understanding and lead to evidence-based policies.

Prioritize grant funding to departments meeting benchmarks.

Support departments through an expansion of the COPS Office Corroborative Reform Initiative.

Collaborate with universities, the Office of Justice Programs and its bureaus, Bureau of Justice Assistance, BJA, Bureau of Justice Statistics, BJS, National Institute of Justice, nij and office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention ojjdp and others to review research and literature in order to inform law enforcement agencies about evidence-based practices and to identify areas of police operations where additional research is needed collaborate with the bjs to establish a central repository for data concerning police use of force resulting in death as well as in custody deaths and disseminate this data for use by both community and police provide local agencies with technical assistance and a template to conduct local citizen satisfaction surveys compile annual citizen satisfaction surveys based on the submission of voluntary local surveys, develop a national-level survey as well as surveys for use by local agencies and by small geographical units, and develop questions to be added to the National Crime Victimization Survey relating to citizen satisfaction with police agencies and public trust.

Collaborate with the BJS and others to develop a template of broader indicators of performance for police departments beyond crime rates alone that could comprise a uniform justice report.

Now, obviously, that is a ginormous range, right? This is a crazy wide range of numbers.

The low end of the range, that 60,000, comes from a National Crime Victimization Survey, which is a twice-yearly poll of crime victims that's conducted by the federal government.

That survey basically asks folks if they've ever been the victim of a violent crime and if a firearm was involved, if they were able to use a firearm to avoid being a victim, etc.

The high end, that 2.5 million number, comes from surveys that were conducted back in the early 1990s.

So as you mentioned, there's a range of different estimates.

Basically, they go from 60 or 100,000 for the National Crime Victimization Survey to others, which basically shows something around 2 million times.

And there's a simple reason for the difference, and it has to do with the screening question.

The National Crime Victimization Survey asks you if you've been a victim of a violent crime, and only if you say you've been a victim do they then go on and ask you any follow-up questions.

The problem is, is if you use a gun defensively, you know, 95% of the time that people use guns defensively, simply brandishing a gun is sufficient to cause a criminal to stop the attack.

You know, nothing happened, no crime actually committed.

You know, you have the federalization of law enforcement in D.C. and Memphis.

You have going after illegal aliens.

That's on the high end.

On the low end, there's the National Crime Victimization Survey, uh, that has shown about 65,000 defensive gun uses every year.

So somewhere between 65,000 and 2.5 million.

Which is a crazy range.

just as prevalent as the use of firearms in crimes, ranging from 500,000 to 3 million annually, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms.

On the absolute lowest end, which the anti-rights advocates like the most, the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated defensive gun use at 108,000 occurrences per year.

But it carries the caveat that it's difficult to interpret because respondents are not asked about defensive firearm use.

Yeah, they like the data about the question that wasn't asked.