Capture-Recapture for Hidden Crime Populations
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.
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Sources
- 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. DOI: 10.1146/annurev-statistics-031017-100641 ↗
- International Working Group for Disease Monitoring and Forecasting (1995). Capture-recapture and multiple-record systems estimation I: History and theoretical development. American Journal of Epidemiology, 142(10), 1047–1058. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a117558 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Capture-Recapture Estimation of Hidden and Dark-Figure Crime Populations. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/criminology/capture-recapture-crime
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Capture-RecaptureSurvey Methodology↔ compare
- Crime Concentration IndexCriminology↔ compare
- Victimization Survey MethodCriminology↔ compare