Jennifer L. Truman, Ph.D., Rachel E. Morgan, Ph.D., Bureau of Justice Statistics

October 20, 2016    NCJ 250180

Presents national rates and levels of criminal victimization in 2015 and annual change from 2014. The report includes statistics on the characteristics of crimes and victims and consequences of victimization. It examines violent crimes (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) and property crimes (household burglary, motor vehicle theft, and theft). It also includes estimates of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, injury, and use of weapons in violent victimization. Data are from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which collects information on nonfatal crimes, reported and not reported to the police, against persons age 12 or older from a nationally representative sample of U.S. households. During 2015, about 95,760 households and 163,880 persons were interviewed for the NCVS. 

Highlights:

• No statistically significant change occurred in the rate of violent crime from 2014 (20.1 victimizations per 1,000) to 2015 (18.6 per 1,000).
• No statistically significant change was detected in the percentages of violent crime reported to police from 2014 (46%) to 2015 (47%).
• The rate of property crime decreased from 118.1 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2014 to 110.7 per 1,000 in 2015.
• In 2015, 0.98% of all persons age 12 or older (2.7 million persons) experienced at least one violent victimization.
• The prevalence rate of violent victimization declined from 1.11% of all persons age 12 or older in 2014 to 0.98% in 2015.

Part of the Criminal Victimization Series

Press Release
Summary (PDF 203K)
Full report (PDF 818K)
ASCII file (47K)
Comma-delimited format (CSV) (Zip format 13K)

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