The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is a collaborative effort by law enforcement agencies for reporting crime rate data as they receive. The UCR brings law enforcement agencies from across the country, including over 18,000 cities, higher education institutions, county, and federal agencies (“ Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics” ). The UCR report's primary use is to provide reliable information for use by law enforcers, sociologists, criminologists, legislators, and the media, among other parties. Data from UCR is used as a basis for budget formulation, planning, resource allocation, and evaluation of police operations. From these uses of the UCR data, law enforcers can address crime challenges at different levels. Other users, such as tourism agencies and chambers of commerce, examine the data to ascertain how the crime rate impact the specific geographic authorities they represent (“ Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics," 2017 ). In this report, a comparison of crime trends comparing Happy Town, Frown Town, Smooth Town, and Cool Town will be provided.
Data Gathering Strategy
The data gathering strategy used in the preliminary stages of preparing this report is document review. The document provided had data on past crime rates for Happy Town, Frown Town, Smooth Town, and Cool Town. Document review was the ideal data collection strategy because it provides one with a methodical procedure for identifying, analyzing, and deriving useful information (“ WBI Evaluation Group," 2007 ). The information contained in the source documents for each town was initially prepared for other local uses. For example, source documents for data on Frown Town crime rates could have been used to generate reports for use by the town's agencies. In this strategy, materials in various forms, such as hard copy or electronic format, can be used.
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The documents that were provided for review had data from 2010 to 2015. The population column showed how the population varied within six years. The other columns show the most critical data for comparison purposes. These columns include murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. These seven columns formed the basis of analysis and comparison. The accredited newspaper augmented the data from the tables for each town. For example, analysis and insights by the Happy Town Tribute complimented tabular data specific for that town.
Document review was an ideal data collection strategy because of its diverse advantages. First, it was an effective and efficient method of gathering data for scientific use because the documents provided were manageable and practical resources. The materials provided verified data about the crime rates in the four towns. Second, analyzing data from the documents was not expensive since they are readily available and well organized. Third, the stability of the data sources implies that they can be reused in future considerations. Documents research was selected for this particular endeavor because the source materials can support the final report and the decision-making events (“ WBI Evaluation Group," 2007 ). Last, document analysis was selected because they provided background information by availing data that was no longer observable.
Crime Trends Discussion
The crime trends across the four towns are diverse, with Cool Town and Frown Town generally exhibiting the least crime rates. Concerning the population sizes, only Happy Town shows a decline in the number of people inhabiting the urban center. Other towns have shown a steady increase in the population sizes with Cool Town showing the most significant increase.
Analysis Table 1: The Rate/100000 are included in brackets (Average Index/Average Population*100,000)
| Town | Average Population | Average MNNM | Average Forcible Rape | Average Robbery | Ave. Aggravated Assault | Average Burglary | Average Larceny-theft | Average Vehicle Theft | Total rate |
| Happy Town | 150090 | 4.8 (3.2) | 6.8 (4.5) | 48.7(32.5) | 79.7(53.1) | 16(10.7) | 190.2(126.7) | 19.8(13.2) | 243.9 |
| Frown Town | 110232.2 | 0.6(0.5) | 1.7(1.5 | 22.7(20.6) | 57.3(52.0) | 14.7(13.3) | 138.5(125.6) | 19.3(17.5) | 231 |
| Smooth Town | 143756.7 | 3.5(2.4) | 4(2.8) | 8.2(5.7) | 77.2(53.7) | 16(11.1) | 162.7(113.2) | 18.5(12.8) | 201.7 |
| Cool Town | 149884.6 | 0.6(0.4) | 1.5(1.0) | 22.7(15.1) | 57.3(38.2) | 14.7(9.8) | 138.5(92.4) | 19.3(12.9) | 169.8 |
Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter (MNNM)
Across the four towns, the number of victims of murder and non-negligent manslaughter varied between 0 and 7 cases in the five years. Happy Town had the highest rate, followed by Smooth Town. Happy Town has a rate of 3.2 while that of Smooth Town stands at 2.4. Frown Town has a rate of 0.5 and the town with the lowest MNNM rate is Cool Town (0.4)
Forcible Rape
Happy Town and Smooth Town had the highest rates of forcible rapes over the entire period. The rate for Happy Town is 4.5, while for Smooth Town is 2.8. Frown Town is a distant third with a rate of 1.5, and last is Cool Town with 1.0.
Robbery
In this category, Happy Town leads with a rate of 32.5, followed by Frown Town with 20.6. Cool Town has a robbery frequency of 15.1 while Smooth Town has a relatively low rate, 5.7.
Aggravated Assault
The rate of aggravated assaults is high in Smooth, Happy, and Frown towns, each with 53.7, 53.1, and 52.0, respectively. The rate for Cool town is considerably low, standing at 38.2.
Burglary
In this category, Frown Town leads with a rate of 13.3 with Smooth and Happy Towns following closely at 11.1 and 10.7 correspondingly.
Larceny (Theft)
Concerning larceny-theft, Happy Town has the highest rate at 126.7. The second place is Frown Town, with a theft frequency of 126. Smooth and Cool Towns come third and fourth, each with a rate of 113.2 and 92.4 correspondingly.
Vehicle Theft
Frown Town leads with a vehicle theft rate of 17.5 while Happy Town comes second with a rate of 13.2. Closely following are Cool and Smooth Towns, each with a 12.9 and 12.8, respectively.
Scoring Table 2 (Each Town is labeled with a number between 1-4-with a 4 being the highest score and the maximum score being)
| Town | MNNM | Forcible Rape | Robbery | Aggravated Assault | Burglary | Larceny-Theft | Vehicle Theft | Total |
| Happy | 4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 24 |
| Frown | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 19 |
| Smooth | 3 | 3 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 17 |
| Cool Town | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 10 |
From the analysis in table 1, Happy Town has the highest overall crime rate (243.9), followed by Frown Town, whose rate stands at 231. Smooth Town is third with a total rate of 201.7 while Cool Town comes last with a rate of 169.8. Table 2 shows how each town performs in individual categories. Happy Town tops in most categories, including murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, and theft. The town comes second in vehicle theft and burglary. Frown Town leads with burglary and vehicle thefts but is second last in other groups. Smooth Town has the highest number of aggravated assaults, second highest cases of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and burglary.
Cool Town performs relatively well coming last in murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, burglary, and larceny-theft. However, the town is second in robbery and second last in vehicle theft. From the above analysis, it evident that crime rates in the four towns are incredibly worrying with Happy Town and Frown Town needing special attention. It can be thus be extrapolated that the status quo of crime in the four towns will remain in the next five years.
References
Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics. Retrieved 27 April 2020, from www.bjs.gov/ucrdata/abouttheucr.cfm
Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics: Their Proper Use. (2017). Retrieved 27 April 2020, from ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-statistics-their-proper-use
WBI Evaluation Group. (2007). Document Review [Ebook] (1st ed.). Retrieved from siteresources.worldbank.org/WBI/Resources/213798-1194538727144/11Final-Document_Review.pdf
