The Uniform Crime Reporting Program

 Introduction 

In order to understand crime, it is vital to know its prevalence. Measuring crime is critically important because crime statistics can help describe crime and explain why they occur. Moreover, good crime statistics are critically important for evaluating programs and policies. In the U.S., various tools have been developed to measure crime. This includes the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) program (Strong & Smith, 2017). The UCR and NCVS were developed as part of the large process of understanding and preventing further crimes. The Federal Bureau of Investigation supplies the UCR. Twice every year, the FBI releases the UCR (FBI, 2004). The aim of the FBI is to ensure crimes are uniformly reported. In this regard, the FBI provides contributing law enforcement agencies with a handbook that explains how to classify crimes as well as how to score offense. This paper will discuss the UCR program. 

Overview of the UCR 

In the U.S., UCR is a collective effort on the part of the city, state, FBI, and other agencies to present a nationwide view of crime. Law enforcement agencies participating in the UCR provide summarized reports on the various types of offenses committed in the U.S as well as the individuals arrested. These agencies also provide information about police officers killed and/or assaulted and on hate crime. The agencies then submit the crime reports every month to their state UCR program (Barnett-Ryan et al., 2014). The states then forward the completed crime reports to the FBI’s national UCR program. Law enforcement agencies that do not have a state UCR program submit their reports directly to the FBI’s national UCR program. The FBI then compile and publish these reports. The FBI also distributes these reports to participating law enforcement agencies, state UCR programs, and other interested parties. 

Historical Background 

In 1927, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) saw the need to report crime statistics in the U.S (FBI, 2004). They formed the Committee on Crime Records, which was responsible for collecting uniform police statistics. The committee first assessed the various offenses committed in the U.S. From their assessment, they identified seven crimes, namely, felonious homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary -breaking or entering, larceny-theft, and auto theft. To ensure crimes are reported uniformly across the U.S., the Committee formulated standardized offense definitions. The culmination of the Committee’s work was the publication of the 1929 UCR (FBI, 2004). The report established uniform definitions of Part I and Part II crimes. The manual also described how to complete the UCR report. Following the successful publication of the UCR, the IACP argued the Congress to pass legislation regarding the collection of crime information. In 1930, Congress enacted legislation that authorized the Attorney General (AG) to collect crime statistics (FBI, 2004). The AG, in turn, elected the FBI to manage the UCR program. 

Since 1930, the UCR has undergone significant modifications to include various other statistics. For example, in 1952, law enforcement agencies began contributing data on the demographics of arrestees (FBI, 2004). The FBI also incorporated the concept of the national Crime Index in 1958 following the recommendation of the UCR committee (FBI, 2004). The index was designed to serve as the general indicator of criminality. In 1960, the FBI started to collect crime statistics across the U.S (FBI, 2004). The same year, the UCR program started to collect national statistics on police officers killed. In 1962, the UCR program published the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). 

Types of Offenses 

When completing the UCR, agencies are required to classify and score offenses. Classifying a crime entails determining the proper category of a crime, whereas scoring a crime entails reporting the number of crimes committed for each category. According to the UCR program, there are two types of offenses: Part I offenses and Part II offenses. Part I contains eight types of offenses, which include “1. Criminal Homicide, 2. Forcible Rape, 3. Robbery, 4. Aggravated Assault, 5. Burglary, 6. Larceny-Theft (except motor vehicle theft), 7. Motor Vehicle Theft, and 8. Arson” (FBI, 2004, 8). Part II offenses encompass the following “9. Other Assaults, 10. Forgery and Counterfeiting, 11. Fraud, 12. Embezzlement, 13. Stolen Property: Buying, Receiving, Possessing, 14. Vandalism, 15. Weapons: Carrying, Possessing, etc., 16. Prostitution and Commercialized Vice, 17. Sex Offenses, 18. Drug Abuse Violations, 19. Gambling, 20. Offenses Against the Family and Children, 21. Driving Under the Influence, 22. Liquor Laws, 23. Drunkenness, 24. Disorderly Conduct, 25. Vagrancy, 26. All Other Offenses, 27. Suspicion, 28. Curfew and Loitering Laws— (Persons under 18), 29. Runaways— (Persons under 18)” (FBI, 2004, 8). All the crimes listed above are in the order of their scoring. The purpose of categorizing offenses and establishing their scores is to facilitate uniform reporting of crimes. 

Index Crimes 

The FBI designates certain crimes as index crimes. This includes Part I crimes. This is because these offenses are serious and are the ones that are often reported to law enforcement officers. They include “criminal homicide, forcible rape, robber, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft (except motor vehicle theft), motor vehicle theft, and arson” (FBI, 2004, 8). This section will delve into discussing how the UCR program defines these index crimes. 

The first index offense is criminal homicide. According to the UCR program committee, criminal homicide entails murder, and non-negligent manslaughter (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015). Based on this definition, suicides, accidental deaths, and deaths caused by negligence are excluded. The second index offense is forcible rapes. Forcible rape entails having sex with another person using force and against his or her will. Based on this definition, attempts or assaults to rape and statutory offenses are excluded. The third index offense is robbery. Robbery entails using force or violence to take or attempt to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of an individual (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015). The fourth index offense is aggravated assault. Aggravated assault refers to the unlawful attack by an individual upon another individual to inflict injury. Aggravated assault is often accompanied by the use of a weapon or other means to cause bodily harm. Based on this definition, simple assaults are excluded. 

The fifth index offense is burglary. Burglary is the entry of a facility by force or unlawfully in order to commit a crime, such as theft (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015). In this definition, the UCR committee excluded attempted forcible entry. The sixth index offense is larceny-theft (except motor vehicle theft). Larceny-theft involves taking away an individual property from his or her possession unlawfully (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015). Some examples of offenses that are considered larceny-theft include shoplifting, pickpocketing, thefts of bicycles, motor vehicle parts, and accessories. Based on this definition, attempted larcenies are excluded. The seventh homicide offense is motor vehicle theft. As the name suggests, this offense involves stealing a motor vehicle. However, the UCR committee excludes motorboats, airplanes, and farm machineries from this definition. The eighth and the last type of index offense is arson. Arson is the willful or malicious burning or attempts to burn a personal property (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2015). The UCR committee provides the definition for each offense to ensure uniform reporting of crimes. 

Conclusion 

There are various tools that are used to collect law enforcement statistics. The UCR program is one of the most established measures used to measure crime in the U.S. The UCR incorporates procedures to collect index offenses and non-index offenses. To further understand crimes in the U.S., the NCVS program was developed to provide additional information. The NCVS was created to give statistics on crimes that do not come to the attention of law enforcement officers. 

References  

Barnett-Ryan, C., Langton, L., & Planty, M. (2014). The nation’s two crime measures.  U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC . 

Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2004). Uniform crime reporting handbook. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Strom, K. J., & Smith, E. L. (2017). The future of crime data: The case for the National Incident‐Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as a primary data source for policy evaluation and crime analysis.  Criminology & Public Policy ,  16 (4), 1027-1048. 

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2015). International Classification of Crime for Statistical Purposes (ICCS)—Version 1.0.