ABSTRACT
The nature of the street crimes imposes some parameters on the number of ways they can be counted. These crimes are similar in that they each consist of an offender; a victim; and, at least for the crimes that are reported or discovered, police and other legal agents. This chapter considers the strengths and weakness of crime data sources that are important for interpreting postwar street crime trends. It argues that longitudinal data are important for understanding postwar crime trends and their origins. The chapter presents postwar trends in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)measure of crimes known to police for total annual rates of murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other theft—the traditional components of the UCR crime index. In a statistical analysis, the chapter highlights that trends for the seven UCR index crimes from 1946 to 1995 were all closely related.
