Increasing cases of violent crimes in the U.S. more so homicides are continuously raising concerns regarding whether the country is nearing the end of “crime decrease in great America." since in the United States public safety is considered as one of the most critical measures of the quality of life, policymakers have become more concerned about the lack of deterioration in crime rates. Even though the early and late 1990s saw a considerable decrease in crime rates, the twenties have become the opposite with violent crimes increasing day by day. For instance, from 2014 to 2016, the national homicide and violent crime rate increased by a considerable margin. Therefore, in the quest to curb the rising crime rate in the U.S., criminal investigation bodies utilize two sources of crime statistics, that is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR).
Uniform Crime Reports
This source of crime statistics is widely employed by the FBI to record the incidence of crime and to make policy decisions. Since the year 1930, the UCR has provided the FBI with information on crimes involving murder, burglary, rape, vehicle theft, robbery, and theft (Pepper & Petrie, 2003) . Moreover, in the year 1979, the system began making reports on crimes regarding arson.
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National Crime Victimization Survey
This source of crime statistics is the central system that is responsible for providing data on criminal victimization to the U.S. each year. It does this by remitting information regarding the characteristics, frequency in addition to the consequences of criminal victimization from a representative sample of households nationally (Pepper & Petrie, 2003) . The information remitted is then employ ed in the estimation of the probability of victimization by robbery, rape, theft, motor vehicle theft, sexual assault, and household burglary.
Theoretical and Practical Flaws
The main feature of UCR is that it utilizes information collected and reported by agencies that enforce the law. However, as this provides it with some measure of advantages in regards to a criminal investigation, it also allows the system to have some flaws. Various data in the UCR, such as arrest information often experience problems that include non-reporting of crimes to the police. Moreover, only a limited number of crimes reported to the police result in an arrest (Greenblatt & Fahey, 2018) .
Furthermore, as the reports for arrests of particular offenses such as auto theft or burglary decrease or increase, vast differences occur in the outcomes, thus resulting in conclusions of crime rates that are misleading. Additionally, the accuracy of the official information in the CRV is flawed by the differences existing in reporting protocols and the definition of crimes (Pepper & Petrie, 2003) . For instance, most of the local-level agencies charged with voluntary reporting of crimes do not always file reports as stated in reporting protocols.
On the other hand, the main issues existing in the NCVS include difficulties associated with asking respondents sensitive questions, non-reporting and false reporting of crime information, sampling problems of non-response and coverage and non-standard definition of criminal events (Pepper & Petrie, 2003) . Furthermore, there exist various issues that surround the conducting of surveys of respondents and the implementation of the systems tasked with official information reporting.
Recommendation
To correct the flaws existing in both the NCVS and UCR, criminal investigation bodies, especially the FBI, should change the reporting rules stated in the sources of criminal statistics (Greenblatt & Fahey, 2018) . By doing so, transparency regarding the outcomes of investigations conducted by law enforcement agencies.
References
Greenblatt, M., & Fahey, M. (2018, December 06). FBI Moves to Fix Critical Flaw in Its Crime Reporting System. Retrieved June 2019, from ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/fbi-moves-to-fix-critical-flaw-in-its-crime-reporting-system
Pepper, J. V., & Petrie, C. V. (2003). Measurement problems in criminal justice research. Retrieved June 2019, from NAP: https://www.nap.edu/read/10581/chapter/2
