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Uniform crime report strengths and weaknesses
Uniform crime report strengths and weaknesses
Uniform crime report strengths and weaknesses
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The Uniform Crime Report, which was developed in the 1930s, is commonly used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a record of crimes committed all across the United States. These crimes, which fall under two categories, Part I and Part II offenses, are reported by local police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation each year. Part I offenses are considered to be the more serious of crimes recognized by society. Such examples of this are homicide, forcible rape, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft, etc. Part II offenses are those that are considered less serious, such as fraud, simple assault, drug abuse, gambling, stolen property, embezzlement, etc. Part I crimes can also be subdivided into what are known as violent crimes and property crimes. (Barkan, 2012). However, there are both some positive and negative aspects of this type of crime measurement. The following paper will explore the small amount of pros and numerous cons associated with the Uniform Crime Report.
Due to the fact that the Uniform Crime Report is released every year, allows for it to be readily available and updated for the media, researchers, students, and government organizations (Rosen, 1995). This is advantages to society because this information is readily available to the public which can be used for statistics or research.
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...
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...reports from police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation are much more extensive and in depth. Included in these reports are the relationship, if any, of the offender and the victim, whether drugs and/or alcohol was involved prior to the offense, etc. (Barkan, 2012). Over time we will eventually see the National Incident Based Reporting System replace the Uniform Crime Report because the detailed accounts of criminal occurrences is more beneficial and descriptive to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the rest of society.
Works Cited
Barkan, Steven E. Criminology: A Sociological Understanding. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2012. Print.
Lejin, Peter P. “Uniform Crime Reports.” Heinonline. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2011.
Rosen, Lawrence. “The Creation of the Uniform Crime Report: The Role of Social Science.” JSTOR. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2011.
Crime data is a resource being used to help understand who the victims are, their age, race, what type of crime they have committed. The more information someone has about crime the more prepared they can be to deal with the victim, evaluate programs that help prevent crime. There are several official sources used UCR, NCVS, NIBRS that are used. There are pros and cons to each source and the following information will include some of the positive and some of the negatives points of each report. This is not inclusive by any means, there are many different various pros and cons of each report.
The UCR is a cooperative effort for nation-wide law enforcement agencies to report on national crime statistics. According to the FBI's "Summary of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program," every month, "18,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily report data on crimes brought to their attention" (as cited in "Uniform Crime Reports"). The UCR first began in the 1920s and 30s. By 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) was made responsible for compiling the data, though the FBI does not and has never collected the crime statistic data itself. The UCR divides crimes into two major categories called Part I offenses and Part II offenses. Part I reports data on "violent and property crimes" ("Uniform Crime Reports"). The list of crimes included under the violent crime classification is "aggravated assault, forcible rape, and robbery" ("Uniform Crime Reports"). The list of crimes classified under property crimes
This information comes from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR). The Uniform Crime Reporting technique was established in 1930, by the FBI. Crime was something that was very hard to keep track of. The FBI started this technique to keep track of crimes that are happening in our nation. Police use uniform crime reporting for their data. Some police departments or officers are required to focus on one specific area and crime. The most popular crimes all deal with drugs. CompSTAT help to map these crimes so that police officers know what geographical location to pay the most attention to. CompSTAT is the most popular technique for police departments to use. When they collect the data of crimes, they take this information and they start to evaluate and create techniques on how to stop or prevent this crime from happening again. According to Police Executive Research forum, “Compstat changed how police view crime problems. Instead of merely responding to crimes after they are committed, police fundamentally expanded their mission to include preventing crimes from happening in the first place” (Compstat: Its Origins, Evolution, and Future In Law Enforcement Agencies, 9). After collecting data for crime mapping the next step is for them to analyze the
In order to found out specific numbers on the crimes that were being taken place in Lufkin, Texas, it was critical to get data from Lufkin, Texas patrol personnel and the Lufkin County Police Department. The police department is in charge of crime reporting, enforcement, prevention, and investigations. They are the first responders to any type of crime in the Lufkin. Texas neighborhoods. The Lufkin Police Department put out an annual report to provide people with a glance of data and statistics of crime, racial profiling, traffic, staffing, and budget from the Lufkin County. This annual report is then sent to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, where statistics become a useful summary tool to compare annual incidents and trends. Index crimes are categorized as violent crimes that are serious in nature and most likely frequently being reported. Violent crimes are crimes such as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Property crimes are crimes such as burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime but it is a crime that is not reported in the crime index (Crime Rates in Lufkin, Texas, 2016, pp. 3,
In contemporary society, there are various methodologies for collecting data (Linden 2012). That being said, there are pros and cons to each that are based on reliability and validity; where reliability is consistency of the statistics, and validity is a measure of how accurate the results are in accordance with the research topic. This ties in with how this paper will explore the Uniform Crime Report system (UCR); a measure of crime that is used the most. UCR statistics reflect the crimes that are reported to the police throughout the country. victimization and self-report surveys, which are statistics that reinforce the findings revealed by the UCR, will also be explored. Lastly, the issue of media coverage of crime news will be examined.
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“The American Society of Criminology is an international organization dedicated to the study of criminology” (ASC homepage). The societies purpose is to educate, research, and study the various aspects of the science, and to transmit ideas and information of criminological development and theories into governmental practices. There are five divisions of the organization, the Division on Corrections and Sentencing, the Division of Critical Criminology, the Division of International Criminology, the Division of People of Color and Crime, and the Division of Women and Crime. Each division has its own individual focus and purpose, as well as an independent website. The Organization as a whole, the American Society of Criminology or ASC, was founded on December 30, 1941, when seven College professors of Political Science and Public Administration joined together “for the purpose of furthering college police training and standardizing police training curricula.” (American Society of Crimino...
Weatherburn, D. (2011) ‘Uses and abuses of crime statistics’, Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice, 153: 1-16
The police records crime reported by the public in 43 police force areas and provides these data to the Home Office and for their Basic Command Units. These data provide a wealth of statistical information on recorded crime rates and possibly identify long-term trends in recorded crime rates. Due to such data collecting process, how crime being reported by the victims or witnesses and recorded by the police may affect the accuracy of such official statistics. Thus, however, the main drawbacks of this kind of statistics are excluding crimes that are not discovered, reported or recorded. Firstly, some criminal activities are not witnessed or discovered then not recorded officially by the police. According to Croall (1998), a crime being counted officially should be perceived and recognised by a member of the public, a victim or law enforcement officers. For example, white –collar crimes such as fraud or misuse of expense accounts may not be discovered easily. Therefore, crimes that are not be seen may be uncounted in the official crime
The “FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is comprised of 4 offenses, murder and no negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault”(FBI, 2015). This includes any and all crime that involve force or threat of force. Theories are suggested to help us better understand the reasons behind violent crime. ADD theory. A normative conflict between subcultures has been traditionally considered a major cause of high crime rates in an area, (Blau & Blau 1982:p116) in addition to the labeling theory being used as a way to analyze the influence of social reaction to deviance. Though labeling theory does subject some groups to being treated equal. However, our law enforcement already does not treat all genders and races
Index crimes in 1990 were taking our nation by storm. By far the most widely found index crime was aggravated assault. The UCR shows that for aggravated assault in the U.S. in 1990 there was over 751,407 cases of aggravated assault reported, but there were also more that the UCR didn’t pick (UCR, 23, 1990) up. On the other hand the NCVS in 1990 reported that there was nearly half more then that of the UCR, 901,039 were in fact accounted for according to the NCVS (NCVS, 1, 1990).
The U.S. Department of Labor (2011) reported the national average of unemployment for 2008 was 5.8 percent. The rate dramatically increased in 2009 with an average of 9.3 percent and 9.6 percent for 2010. While unemployment rates have increased, the FBI’s preliminary reports for 2010 show that law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have reported a decrease of 6.2 percent in the number of violent crimes for the first 6 months of 2010 when compared to figures reported for the same time in 2009. The violent crime category includes rape, murder, robbery, and aggravated result. The number of property crimes also decreased 2.8 percent when compared to the same time last year. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson decreased 14.6 percent when compared to the same time periods of 2009 (FBI, 2011).