Compare methods

	Capture-Recapture for Hidden Crime Populations	Capture-Recapture	Crime Concentration Index	Victimization Survey Method
Field	Criminology	Survey Methodology	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Process / pipeline	Regression model	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1995	1978	1989	1973
Originator	International Working Group for Disease Monitoring and Forecasting (modern multi-list synthesis); Sheila Bird & Ruth King (criminal-justice applications)	Otis, Burnham, White & Anderson	Lawrence Sherman, Patrick Gartin & Michael Buerger; David Weisburd	U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement / NCVS and CSEW programs
Type	Population-size estimation from overlapping incomplete lists	Probabilistic population size estimator	Descriptive concentration measure for crime across micro-places	Probability-sample survey measuring crime victimization including unreported offenses
Seminal source	Bird, S. M., & King, R. (2018). Multiple systems estimation (or capture-recapture estimation) to inform public policy. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, 5, 95–118.	Otis, D. L., Burnham, K. P., White, G. C., & Anderson, D. R. (1978). Statistical inference from capture data on closed animal populations. Wildlife Monographs, 62, 3–135.	Sherman, L. W., Gartin, P. R., & Buerger, M. E. (1989). Hot spots of predatory crime: Routine activities and the criminology of place. Criminology, 27(1), 27–56.	Lynch, J. P., & Addington, L. A. (Eds.) (2007). Understanding Crime Statistics: Revisiting the Divergence of the NCVS and UCR. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 9780521862042
Aliases	Multiple Systems Estimation, Mark-Recapture for Hidden Populations, Dark-Figure Population Estimation, Lincoln-Petersen Crime Estimation	Mark-Recapture, Tag-Recapture, Mark-Release-Recapture, İşaretle-Yeniden Yakala	Crime Concentration at Place, Hot-Spot Concentration Measure, Cumulative Crime Concentration, Law of Crime Concentration	Crime Victimization Survey, Victimisation Survey Method, Crime Survey Methodology, Self-Report Victimization Survey
Related	3	2	4	3
Summary	Capture-recapture, known in criminology and public health as multiple systems estimation, infers the size of a hidden population — undocumented homicide victims, trafficking victims, problem drug users, undetected offenders — that no single source counts completely. By examining how much two or more incomplete lists overlap, it estimates how many cases were missed by all of them: the 'dark figure' of crime. Borrowed from wildlife ecology, the method was synthesized for human populations by the International Working Group in 1995 and brought to criminal-justice policy by Bird and King.	Capture-recapture (also known as mark-recapture) is a statistical method for estimating the size of an unknown population by sampling it twice and tracking which individuals appear in both samples. Formally systematized for closed animal populations by Otis, Burnham, White, and Anderson in their landmark 1978 Wildlife Monographs paper, the method extends naturally to human populations, epidemiology, and incomplete administrative records.	The crime concentration index quantifies how unevenly crime is distributed across micro-geographic places such as street segments or addresses. Building on Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger's 1989 discovery that a small fraction of addresses produces most calls for police service, and formalized in Weisburd's 2015 'law of crime concentration', it expresses the share of all crime accounted for by the most crime-prone places.	The victimization survey method measures crime by asking a representative sample of households or individuals what they have actually experienced, rather than counting offenses recorded by police. Pioneered in the United States with the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and developed in Britain as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), it captures the 'dark figure' of crime that never reaches the authorities, using a rotating-panel design with screening questions, detailed incident forms, bounding interviews, and weighted estimation.