A critique is offered of’ the methodology of the criminal victimization survey and several sources of error that may result in artificially inflated crime rates based on such data are identified. It is argued that much information about crimes given by respondents may be incorrect due to misunderstandings about what transpired, ignorance about legal definitions, memory failures about when crimes occurred, and outright prefabrication. Organizational imperatives that may cause interviewers and coders to skew the data toward a showing of greater criminality are analyzed. Some ideas for measuring response error more precisely are presented.

An analysis of criminal court verdicts after trials with and without juries shows that, contrary to popular belief, juries are acting tougher than judges in deliberating the fate of defendants. Study of 58,336 trials of persons charged with felonies in six states and the District of Columbia shows that juries convict substantially more often than judges trying cases alone. The slightly contrary results in two other jurisdictions are explained by special circumstances. The phenomenon of jury toughness is seen to be the result of changes in the dominant political ideology, as trend data on federal court verdicts show an increasing rate of jury convictions since the 1950s as a response to the growth of popular conservatism on criminal justice issues. Jurors, as representing the body politic, have used their discretion over fact finding as their means of expressing indignation about crime and dealing harshly with criminals.

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