UCR Agency-Level Data, 1975-Current

The UCR Program was based upon work by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) throughout the 1920s to create a uniform national set of crime statistics, reliable for analysis.

Uniform Crime Reports—FBI Law enforcement agencies report arrest data for 22 additional crime categories. The UCR Program compiles data from monthly law enforcement reports or individual crime incident records transmitted directly to the FBI or to centralized agencies that then report to the FBI.

• Arrests by Age, Sex, and Race, monthly reports:
• Arrests by Age, Sex, and Race, Summarized Yearly.
• Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest:
• Property Stolen and Recovered:
• Supplementary Homicide Reports:
• Police Employee (LEOKA) Data:
• Hate Crime Data**
• Arson.

The UCR reports the number of each crime reported to the police as well as their rate of occurrence. To obtain a crime rate we divide the number of reported crimes in a state by its population and multiply the quotient by 100,000, as in the following comparison of California and Louisiana rates.

Index crimes are the eight crimes the FBI combines to produce its annual crime index. These offenses include willful homicide, forcible rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, larceny over $50, motor vehicle theft, and arson.

Examples of UCR problems are as follows: it represents reported crimes, while many crimes are not reported to police; when crimes are reported to police, the crimes may not be recorded; only local and state crimes are reported, not federal crimes or crimes at institutions (e.g., jails and prisons); definitions of …

Usefulness of UCR Data UCR crime statistics are used in many ways and serve many purposes. They provide law enforcement with data for use in budget formulation, planning, resource allocation, assessment of police operations, etc., to help address the crime problem at various levels.

National Incident-Based Reporting System

UCR employs the hierarchy rule to recognize the most serious offense per incident, whereas under NIBRS, agencies are required to submit detailed information about all offenses committed in a single incident. With NIBRS, officers can collect data on up to 10 criminal offenses within an incident.

A large body of research argues that the high amount of violence in mass media elevates the public’s fear of criminal victimization. It is well documented that crime content is a pronounced feature of mass media and distorts the reality of crime by disproportionately focusing on random violent crimes (Reiner 2007).

Children

experiences and criminal behaviour (Ardino, 2011; Foy, Furrow & McManus, 2011; Weeks & Widom, 1998, 1989) revealing that offenders present a higher prevalence of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD; APA, 1994) and associated symptoms when compared with the general population (Wright, Borrill, Teers & Cassidy, 2006).

Criminal activity acts like a tax on the entire economy: it discourages domestic and foreign direct investments, it reduces firms’ competitiveness, and reallocates resources creating uncertainty and inefficiency.

With almost a decade of post-recession data analysis in the books, it’s clear that crime rates generally decreased in the U.S. during the 2008 financial crisis.

It is possible that, as GDP per capita increases, real violent crime rates aren’t increasing, but reported violent crime rates are increasing, as more law enforcement expenditure allows for more police to enforce the law. This study provides interesting conclusions that provoke further study.