… All official crime stats are missing the so-called “dark figure” of unreported crime. “You can think of rape and sexual assault as the darkest of the dark figure of crime,” said Candace Kruttschnitt, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who is co-chairing a panel of researchers who are advising the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics on its victimization surveys. …
“In general, countries should not be compared unless they ask the same exact questions,” a CDC spokeswoman said. And the same goes for surveys within the same country that differ in methodology and question wording, she added.
“Different sampling methods, survey questions and interviewing protocols mean that most of these surveys are not comparable,” said Holly Johnson, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa. [cont.]
Carl Bialik, Wall Street Journal