According to a report from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), more than half of violent crimes nationally went unreported between 2006 and 2010. This amounts to nearly 3.4 million crimes per year. Looking at a longer period, from 1994 to 2010, the report found that the percentage of unreported violent and property crimes fell.
The BJS report looks at reasons for not reporting different types of crime and the characteristics of the offenders and the victims. For example, during the 2006 to 2010 period, the report found that the most common reason for not reporting a crime involving a weapon and injury was fear of retaliation or getting the offender into trouble. The report reached this same conclusion regarding incidents of intimate partner violence that were not reported.
The report relies on data from the BJS National Crime Victimization Survey, which collects data on crime victims to complement the official reporting of crime data by law enforcement as part of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.
Read the full report at:
