Crime Reporting in Chicago: A Comparison of Police and Victim Survey Data, 1999–2018

• Published date: 01 August 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00224278221098053
• Author: Maribeth L. Rezey,Janet L. Lauritsen
• Date: 01 August 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Crime Reporting

in Chicago: A

Comparison of Police

and Victim Survey

Data, 1999–2018

Maribeth L. Rezey

1

and Janet L. Lauritsen

2

Abstract

Objectives: A critical unknown in any jurisdiction is the scope of crime that is

not brought to the attention of police. This study provides a unique com-

parison of Chicago crime rates using both police and victimization survey

data. Levels of crime reporting and the reasons victims provide for or

against reporting crime to the police are examined. Patterns are compared

to those found for other large U.S. cities. Methods: Data for Chicago resi-

dents from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are used to

estimate serious violence and burglary rates, levels of reporting to the

police, and residents’justif‌ications for reporting or not reporting. Levels

and trends in NCVS and Chicago Police Department rates of serious vio-

lence and burglary are compared. Results: The NCVS data show that

while Chicago residents typically experience higher rates of these crimes

1

Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

2

Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO,

USA

Corresponding Author:

Maribeth L. Rezey, Department of Criminal Justice & Criminology, Loyola University Chicago,

1032 W. Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL 60660, USA.

Email: mrezey@LUC.edu

Article

Journal of Research in Crime and

Delinquency

2023, Vol. 60(5) 664–699

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00224278221098053

journals.sagepub.com/home/jrc

than residents of other large cities, they report these crimes to the police

at mostly similar rates. Reasons for and against reporting these crimes to

the police are generally similar to victims elsewhere. Conclusions: Despite

a documented history of distrust in the police, Chicago residents do not

appear to have notably lower rates of reporting serious violence or bur-

glary to the police than residents of other large cities.

Keywords

Chicago, crime trends, National Crime Victimization Survey, crime

reporting, violence

Introduction

A Midwestern U.S. city of just over two and a half million residents,

Chicago, Illinois is regularly featured in the media and is frequently

labeled as one of the nation’s most violent cities (see, e.g., CBS News

2020; Stebbins 2019). Chicago often receives national news attention

about its high rates of violence and pervasive community distrust in its

local law enforcement agency—the Chicago Police Department (Crabtree

2019). Following publicized videos of Chicago Police Department (CPD)

off‌icers engaging in use of force practices that many believed were a viola-

tion of the U.S. Constitution or federal law, the U.S. Department of Justice

began a yearlong investigation into the CPD in December 2015. In this

federal investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice (2017) determined

that the CPD engaged in systemic patterns and practices that violated resi-

dent’s constitutional rights. The U.S. Department of Justice (2017) further

asserted in its report that trust in the Chicago police “has been broken by

systems that have allowed CPD off‌icers who violate the law to escape

accountability. This breach in trust has in turn eroded CPD’s ability to effec-

tively prevent crime; in other words, trust and effectiveness in combating

violent crime are inextricably intertwined”(p. 1–2).

Recent research by McCarthy and colleagues (2020) found that com-

plaints regarding police misconduct in many of Chicago’s highly segregated

neighborhoods are grounded in a history of police misconduct recalled by

generations of Chicago residents (for a review of the history of police mis-

conduct in the CPD see Bleakley 2019). Consequently, the deterioration of

police-community relations has often left community members feeling more

isolated, more vulnerable to violence, and less inclined to seek out help

Rezey and Lauritsen 665

and/or protection from the police (Sodhi et al. 2020). In fact, the erosion of

trust between the CPD and Chicago residents is believed to have also led to

increasingly uncooperative victims and bystanders during police investiga-

tions of violent crime, even in the face of daily fatal and/or nonfatal shoot-

ings in their own neighborhoods (Madhani 2018). CPD off‌icials have

recently admitted that they need the community’s help to solve violent

crime in Chicago, but renewed efforts to restore relations with local citizens

are only just beginning (Sweeney and Gorner 2018).

As is the case for most places in the country, violence in the city of

Chicago has been measured using crime statistics obtained from its police

department, and violent incidents not reported to the police are absent

from off‌icial counts and rates of crime in the city. A critical unknown in

Chicago is the scope of crime that is not brought to the attention of

police. The extent of crime not reported to CPD, and the reasons why resi-

dents choose not to report their victimizations to the police, are of great

concern among city off‌icials and residents. Furthermore, because the CPD

is charged with preventing crime and victimization in the city, yet also pro-

vides the main source of data that can be used to verify whether they are suc-

cessful at executing this charge, distrust in the CPD’s crime data and the

success of any prevention efforts is likely.

Levels of trust in the accuracy of police-based crime data and concerns

about levels of unreported crime are not unique to the city of Chicago.

The development of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pre-

viously known as the National Crime Survey), was prompted by these same

concerns about crime in the U.S. in the late 1960s (see, e.g., Groves and

Cork 2008). Developing the capacity for the NCVS to provide subnational

estimates of crime has long been viewed as an important goal of the data,

particularly because many jurisdictions do not have the resources to

conduct their own local or state victimization surveys (Langton, Planty,

and Lynch 2017). The Bureau of Justice Statistics has been working to

develop NCVS-based subnational estimates of victimization using a

variety of methodological strategies (see https://bjs.ojp.gov/subnational-

estimates-program). In preliminary analyzes, we found that the NCVS

public-use data could be used to estimate criminal victimization and crime

reporting rates for the city of Chicago, thus providing a rare opportunity

to compare victimization survey and police data for a large U.S. city.

This study seeks to better understand the level and trend in crime rates

and in crime reporting and non-reporting behaviors in Chicago for the

period 1999–2018. Through the triangulation of data sources, we accom-

plish in this study what many other studies cannot; we are able to directly

666 Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 60(5)