Every Crime, Every Month

March 27, 2008
Posted by Jay Livingston

The comedian Robert Klein used to do a spoof of those late-night TV ads: “Now you can get every record ever recorded. . . .” Well, now you can get every crime ever recorded. Almost.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, for all its flaws, is still an important source of data on crime in the US. And for anything prior to 1973, it’s pretty much the only source.

Now Michael Maltz has created a file with data on serious crime (the “Index offenses”), month by month from 1960 to 2004, for each police department. If your police department is one of the 17,000 you can track their crime statistics.

Remember when someone broke into your car and stole the radio back in October of 1986, and when you reported it to the police you weren’t sure if they were taking you seriously, maybe because the desk sergeant said, “So? What do you want me to do about it?”* Well, you can check to see if your victimization made it into the larceny stats that month.

You can download the zip file here (it’s about 150Mb). Unzip it and you get an Excel file for each state. It took me a couple of minutes to find the manual hidden among these. It’s a Word file (“Using . . .”).

Good luck, crimheads.

*This actually happened to a friend of mine and in my precinct, though I have disguised the year and month.

Hat tip to Andrew Gelman.