Three decades of NCVS data show a recent drop in reporting sexual violence against women

This paper analyzed 30 years of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): Concatenated File, [United States], 1992-2021, provided by NACJD, to track how sexual violence reporting to police has changed in that time. Ongoing since the 1970s, the NCVS uses a nationally representative sample of households to collect information, via individual victim surveys, about both reported and unreported crimes. Fleming et al. analyzed only data collected from self-identified females over age 12, as well as variables indicating their victimization in violent sexual incidents, and whether after such incidents police were contacted. In the 30-year span, Fleming et al. found three distinct time periods that showed a shift in the reporting of such incidents, the most recent of which, 2018-2021, showed a 12 percentage point drop. The authors discussed each time period, along with the public discourse, societal changes, and legislative reforms that were occurring during each. Throughout the entire 30-year period, roughly 70 percent of sexual violence incidents were never reported to law enforcement, making it chronically under-reported compared to other violent crimes. See more publications using the data from the NCVS concatenated study, or from individual-year NCVS studies.

January 22, 2026