Highlights
If you combine violent and property crime with cybercrime and identity theft, it’s possible that most Americans are victimized by crime yearly which may partially explain why we are at record levels of fear of crime.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Note: New Yearly Crime Data Is Available from The FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey. Per the Survey, the US experienced the largest increase in violence ever recorded (44 percent) in 2022. Per the FBI, there was a small decrease in violent crime but most categories of crime increased in 2022.
What’s The Percentage Of Americans Victimized By Crime Yearly?
It’s possible that victimization exceeds half the population when you combine violent and property crime with identity theft and cybercrime.
What we don’t know are the percentages that overlap. Repeat victimization is possible per data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Revision (12-23): A reader suggested that my warning (sentence above) about repeat victimization is not strong enough. Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics (link above) there are a considerable number of crime victims who are repeatably victimized. The point? The suggestion that half of Americans are victimized in one year is not statistically provable. Because of this, I changed “probable” to “possible” throughout the article. The drawback to the observation, however, is that there are few (if any) observations about crime that are statistically provable. If crime writers only wrote about data that all agree is methodologically incontestable, we would stop writing.
This article started with new research from the Bureau of Justice Statistics on identity theft (24 million U.S. residents are victimized yearly). It morphed into something bigger when I looked at Gallup numbers on total “household” data combining violent and property crimes, cybercrime, and identity theft.
Households refer to multiple people living under the same roof, usually married (or cohabiting), and their tax dependents.
Per Gallup, (2016) beyond the 29 percent of households victimized by violent and property crimes, 27 percent of households had their credit card stolen by hackers and 17 percent of households were victims of identity theft.
Gallup refers to these figures as a direct experience with crime.
Per Gallup (2021) beyond the 23 percent of households victimized by violent and property crimes, 28 percent of households had their credit card stolen by hackers and 17 percent were victims of identity theft.
Suppose you combine violent and property crime with cybercrime and identity theft (via the new numbers from The Bureau of Justice Statistics). In that case, it’s possible that most Americans are victimized by crime every year which may partially explain why we are at record levels of fear of crime.
Is Fear Of Crime Exaggerated If Most Are Victimized Yearly?
What’s more impactful, losing thousands of dollars to identity theft and cybercrime or being a victim of a $100.00 robbery? There are endless references to victims being emotionally devastated by identity theft and cybercrime; the same applies to victims of violent or property crime. I’ve seen victims of bicycle thefts move because their garage was broken into multiple times.
Some pundits suggest that Americans greatly exaggerate the impact of crime and fear. Their point is that we had a twenty-year-plus period of declining rates of crime (which ended in 2015 with a 28 percent increase in violence and serious violence) and that current rates of violence are less than past decades.
That argument ended in 2022 per the Bureau of Justice Statistics data (released in August of 2023) with a 44 percent increase in violence per one analyst and huge increases in violence for a variety of groups. A 44 percent increase in violent crime sets an all-time high.
But crime statistics and fear become convoluted because Americans perceive personal danger more via signs of disorder (i.e., trash, prostitution, drug dealing, graffiti, people hanging out, and media coverage) than crime numbers.
But crime statistics take on a new dimension when one understands that it’s plausible that most Americans are victimized by crime yearly “and” the losses from identity theft or cyber crime can greatly exceed the financial impact of most robberies or theft.
The Costs Of Street Crime Compared to Identity Theft Or Cyber Crime
Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics, “On average, victims (editor’s note-identity theft) sustained direct financial losses of $880. Victims of new account misuse ($3,430) had higher direct losses on average compared to victims of bank account ($670) and credit card misuse ($620). While about 6 in 10 (59%) victims of identity theft incidents in 2021 had financial losses of $1 or more, those losses totaled $16.4 billion” dollars.
Generally speaking, the average monetary costs of street-level criminality (of individuals) are less. For example, street robberies (without injury) often involve small sums. Many commercial robberies cost less than the numbers above.
Those of us in the justice system see firsthand the impact of being the victim of a robbery or an assault or a burglary and how it causes people to purchase firearms or move or invest in a security system.
The devastating impact of the financial losses of identity theft (however) outweighs the losses of most day-to-day criminality.
Related Research
See Most Americans Are Victimized by Crime (previous article) for additional research.
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National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
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Note: Identity Theft And Cyber Crime Are Different Modes Of Theft
Identity theft can be a matter of copying a credit card when you pay your restaurant bill. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, identities can be stolen through traditional modes (i.e., physically) or cyber-enabled means (i.e., during an online transaction). Among victims who knew how their personal information was obtained, about 38% said it was done through cyber-enabled means (an online transaction, scam email or phone call, or electronic access to their work or home computer, cellphone, tablet, or other electronic device).