The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was conceived in 1929 by the
International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation. (Uniform Crime Reports, 2011) At the time it was argued that among the variety of official data, not only were "offenses known" closest to the crime itself, but a more constant relationship existed between offenses committed and offenses known to the police than between offenses committed and other official data; assumptions shown to be erroneous by victimization surveys many years later. (Britt, Statistics: Reporting Systems and Methods - Unofficial Crime
Statistics, 2011)In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those
statistics.
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At least one knows these crimes happened instead of a survey which one could be deceitful.
NATIONAL INCIDENCE BASED REPORTING SYSTEM
During the 1980s, law enforcement agencies sought to improve official reporting methods, particularly the UCR. In 1985 the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the F.B.I. released Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. This blueprint outlined the next generation of official reporting methods, specifically the National IncidenceBased
Reporting System (NIBRS). Starting with 1991 data, the UCR program began to move to this more comprehensive reporting system. While the UCR is essentially offender-based, focusing on summary accounts of case and offender characteristics, the NIBRS is incident-based, seeking to link more expansive data elements to the crime, included in six primary categories: administrative, offense, property, victim, offender, and arrestee (Britt, Statistics: Reporting
Systems and Methods - Unofficial Crime Statistics, 2011).
Unlike the UCR, which is limited to a relatively small number of F.B.I. index crimes,
NIBRS provides details on forty-six offenses. This specificity allows for more accurate
The UCR is the Uniformed Crime Rate is a record of crime reported to law enforcement agencies, only crimes that are reported to law agencies are included.
The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is constructed by the FBI on statistics of crime in the U.S. The FBI consolidates the information it receives from law enforcement officials and integrates all the information into a data that measures crime. This information is compiled by over 18,000 different agencies, from the universities to federal agencies. The information they receive is placed into two different categories, part 1 and part 2 offenses. UCR also measure crime against only women and the NCVS measures against both male and female.
US Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. n.d. 13 February 2012 .
Uniform Crime Report data has many pros, but also many cons that come with it. There are many ways of which the Uniform Crime Report can be superior to, but also inferior to victimization and self-report data studies. According to Balkan (2015), the Uniform Crime Report shows crimes reported to police departments across the nation and is a report produced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. There are two offense categories in the report: part one and part two offenses. Part one offenses would be your more serious crimes such as homicides, rape, aggravated assaults, and so on. Part two offenses would be more of the property crimes such as fraud, simple assaults, and drug abuse. The Uniform Crime Report does an excellent job presenting the numbers in terms of the part one offenses, however, there are some cons that come with the Uniform Crime
Rather, the UCR aims to disclose complete national data with increased consistency (reliability). This allows for more validity when comparing statistics. That being said, there is no perfect method of collecting and sharing statistics, leaving UCR under debate of its pros and cons. The first benefit of UCR, specifically in Canada, is that it has progressed ahead of the American UCR system. This benefit is not simply within the Canadian UCR system alone, but also a reflection of the Criminal Code of Canada. To elaborate, the Criminal Code of Canada is document that applies nationally, with no exception allowing for consistent definitions, and classifications of what constitutes crime. Whereas in America, there are 50 states that each have its independent code for criminal definitions and classifications. Thus, on a national scale, America 's UCR system is inconsistent; whereas police departments across Canada share the same definitions and classifications of crime, allowing for more reliable and valid statistics. This is important because it essentially comes down to ease of access and interpretation of statistics. For instance, the Canadian UCR system will not only benefit sociologists, criminologists, and others in the field of occupation that require crime statistics; but also the general population (citizens) who can understand the data more easily. That being said, the UCR has its disadvantages at a foundational, with less regard of the country implementing this
For decades now, including the years 1994 and 1995, the time of the O.J. Simpson murder trial, American law enforcement has used two major data sources to measure crime. First, there is the Uniform Crime Report or UCR. The UCR is compiled data from reported crimes, it is a very accurate system used for murder and those crimes that cannot go unnoticed. Next, we have The National Crime Victim Survey or NCVS which is a unanimous survey, better at accounting for the crimes that may not get reported, crimes such as rape or assault.
Report: "2008 Crime in the United States, Expanded Homicide Data – Table 9." Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, September 2009. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_...
Compstat has improved policing ever since it was introduced in the 1990s. Compstat is a system that is used by police agencies to reduce crime as well as achieving other departmental goals. Some of department goals are developing good relationship with the community as well as empowering commanders together with their subordinates. It focuses on sharing information, responsibility, fostering accountability, as well as improving tactics used to solve crime. Although, it has also been criticized for been incompatible with the community, inflexible and undermining some goals of policing, it is still acknowledged as an important organizational development in policing during the latter half of the 20th century (BJA, police executive research forum, compstat, 2010).
Table 1 of the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January-June, 2015 demonstrates the percent change by population group. The population group is broken down into cities and counties according to population. According to table 1, the crimes with the highest arrest rates were murder, rape, and aggravated assault, followed by robbery and motor vehicle theft. Murder, rape, and aggravated assault fall under Violent Crime Index whereas robbery and motor vehicle theft
Muller, Damon A. "Criminal Profiling ." Homicide Studies 4.3 (2000): 234-364. Web. 9 Apr 2011.
The Uniform Crime Report also allows us to geographically see crimes spread over the United States. Where certain crimes are committed, who is committing them, and when they are most likely committed. These trends allow for federal and local law enforcement to predict where patrolling may need to be more prevalent or allow criminal profilers to be able to speculate what type of person is a possible suspect for a certa...
We hear a lot about the crime rates going up and down from the media and they tend to expand on specific types of criminal behavior that might be of interest to the public. When politicians are running for office we are told that the crime rates are down due to the tough crime policies that they have been implemented. Citizens seek crime rates for assistance in determining if the area they reside in is safe. Some people wish to get a general idea of the crime rates for a specific neighborhood where they are thinking of purchasing a house. But what is never explained is where do the crime statistics come from and were there any factors that could have had an effect on their reliability. Crime statistics, which are created from what is reported to the police, are often unreliable. There are several influential factors that can make crime statistics both increase and decrease at any time. Most police departments, but not all, use Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) to submit their statistics to the state. Attempting to compare two police agency's crime statistics is almost impossible because not all police agencies use the UCR program for classifying crimes. UCR is a national data reporting policy that is maintained by the state and regulated by the FBI. This policy requires police agencies to report their monthly statistics by following a hierarchy scale for classifying the criminal offenses. A hierarchy scale is a list of crimes in a specific order of importance used to pick out the highest crime when there are multiple crimes committed in one incident. An example: a citizen contacts the police and makes a report of a burglary, a rape and a larceny all occurring in one incident. A...
Weatherburn, D. (2011) ‘Uses and abuses of crime statistics’, Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice, 153: 1-16
The UCR2 allows for more detailed crime analysis, the most helpful being that it goes into more depth on the incidents that are reported to police. The UCR2 now, “adds detailed information on individual criminal incidents including victim, accused persons and incident characteristics” (Boyd, 2015). Moreover, UCR2 allows up to four different types of offences committed in one incident, to be reflected in the report, which better shows the different types of offences that occur, whereas in the UCR only the most severe crime was reflected, for example if there was a theft followed by a homicide then the homicide would most likely only be reported. Finally, the category of violent crimes and property crimes was broadened and new crimes were included in these two categories.
Federal Bureau of Investigaiton. (2010, December 22). Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January –June, 2010. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjs/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s./2010/preliminary-crime-in-the-us-2009