The State of Criminal Statistics

or municipal ofhcial, and another department receives reports from other officials. Uniform systems of reporting have not been developed, so that published materials are not comparable. In some states the only criminal statistics available are those published by individual institutions or agencies. Only ten states-California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Texas-and the Territory of Hawaii have a central bureau which collects and publishes statistical information from reports made by a variety of municipal, county, or state agencies.i Some of these bureaus, such as the one in California, have very comprehensive programs, but others are greatly limited in their activities. The principal point made in most publications evaluating the criminal statistics published by either local or central agencies is a negative one-the statistics are not reliable indexes of crime rates. After at least a quartercentury of articles of this sort, we are aware that the general statistics on crime are among the most unsatisfactory of all social statistics. This awareness has not served to correct the deficiencies, but it has introduced notes of caution in the interpretation of any set of statistics dealing with crime. We shall review some of the reasons why crime statistics must be interpreted with caution, and then shall ask two questions which seem timely: What can be done with the kind of statistics we have? Why do we have this kind of statistics?