Criminal Justice Dual Credit Practice Test

The two major sources of crime statistics are the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Uniform Crime Reports. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a national household survey that asks people about crimes they or members of their household experienced, including many incidents that never get reported to police. This provides a picture of crime from the victim’s perspective and helps capture the dark figure of crime—offenses that would be missed if we relied only on police reports. The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), published by the FBI, compile data on crimes reported to law enforcement across jurisdictions, giving official counts of crimes as reported to police and allowing for standardized national statistics based on those reports. Choosing the combination that names the NCVS and the UCR is why this option is best. It reflects the two complementary sources: one based on victims’ reports, the other based on police reports. Other choices mix sources that aren’t distinct from one another (FBI crime statistics are essentially the UCR, so listing both isn’t giving two separate sources), or substitute a nonstandard name for the NCVS (the formal title is National Crime Victimization Survey, not National Victimization Survey).