National Crime Victimization and Survey and the National Incident-Based Reporting System

Victimology
Student Name
Institutional affiliation
Course Name and Number
Professor
Due Date
Victimology
There are different methods for government reporting tools. According to Isaacs (1961), governments devise ways to monitor acts of crime, the psychological effects of crime, and the relationship between the victim and the offender. These investigations examine victim patterns, study how victims interact with law enforcement, and analyze how demographical factors affect the victim's perception. Data collected from these studies aim to provide law enforcement and forensic psychology experts with insights that will help to improve crime prevention, law enforcement, corrections, and criminal prosecution. To attain these goals, the government uses two key strategies to collect, analyze and record victimization data, the National Crime Victimization and Survey and the National Incident-Based Reporting System, otherwise known as Uniform Crime Reports. However helpful and practical these data collection tools are, they have their fair share of strengths and weaknesses.
The most helpful component of the platforms is that the National Crime Victimization and Survey respondents give information about themselves, including age, sex, race, marital status, level of education, income, and whether they have experienced victimization. If one has encountered victimization, this tool also gathers information about the perpetrator, including age, race, sex, and relationship to the victim. According to Cobley (1991), the tool gives information on the crime, weapon used, and whether it was reported to the authorities. Usually questioned are persons aged 12 or older. In the National Incident-Based Reporting System, only the victim's information and the law enforcement officer connected to the felony are gathered in case of an offence. The relationship between the offender and the victim is not questioned, leaving a non-comprehensive and incomplete report about the offender. If multiple offenders assault a victim, a relative being among them, this relationship is recognized as a family member while the other assailants are only recognized as others. In this reporting tool, law enforcement officers can only report three types of weapons involved in felonies...