The 2015 Montana Crime Victimization Survey
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In 2015, The Montana Board of Crime Control’s (MBCC) Statistical Analysis Center—in partnership with the University of Montana Criminology Research Group (CRG), the University of Montana Social Science Research Lab, and the University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER)—set out to construct a crime victimization survey to better understand crime in Montana. By asking Montanans about their personal experience of crime, the 2015 Montana Crime Victimization Survey (MVCS 2015) provides an important alternative to existing law enforcement crime data, such as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), the Montana Incident-Based Reporting System (MTIBRS), and national-level victimization survey data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Gathering data directly from Montanans about their experiences with criminal victimization provides insight into unreported crime (or crimes not known to police). By their nature, unreported crimes are absent from statistics obtained from the UCR and the MTIBRS. Though the NCVS also gathers crime data from victims, its design provides national-level statistics that cannot be disaggregated to the state level (with limited exceptions for some metropolitan areas). MCVS 2015 was designed to address the data gap between the UCR, the MTIBRS, and the NCVS by surveying the extent and nature of unreported crimes within Montana. [CVRL Note: the first 20 pages are an executive summary of findings followed by more details on methods and findings. See also the survey instruments, questions, formulas, and multiple tables showing responses for each question.] (Author Text)