Uniform Crime Reports Essay ⋆ Criminal Justice Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) is an annual compilation of statistical information on crimes known to the police in the United States. The program, which is administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), represents the voluntary efforts of the nation’s law enforcement agencies to monitor crime patterns. The UCR compiles data on reported crime and arrests for those crimes and is the most important source of information on crime in the United States.

The UCR traces its roots to the 1920s, when the International Association of Chiefs of Police called for a national system for collecting and reporting crime statistics and trends. Initially, seven crime categories were selected in efforts to monitor national crime trends. These crime categories, which later became known as the Crime Index, included homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and auto theft. In 1979, arson was added as the eighth Crime Index offense.

Over the years, the scope of the UCR has expanded beyond its original purpose of simply estimating crime rates. The 1950s, for example, saw the introduction of demographic information on arrestees (e.g., age, race, gender). In the 1960s, the UCR added the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR), which includes data on murder victims, weapons used, and circumstances of the crime. The most significant changes occurred in the 1980s, when law enforcement officials initiated the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which significantly expanded, modernized, and improved the UCR program. With this new reporting strategy, states collect incident, victim, property, offender, and arrestee information for 22 crime categories. As of 2005, 29 states were certified NIBRS participants.

For crimes that are typically reported, such as homicide, the UCR data are very useful. The SHR, for example, is the most important source of statistics on homicide between intimates. However, for largely hidden forms of interpersonal violence, such as child abuse, intimate partner violence, and rape, the UCR is of little use. Indeed, many of these behaviors are not even recognized as crime, per se, and subsequently are not reported to the police. In the study of interpersonal violence, therefore, researchers tend to rely on alternative data sources. Examples include the Conflict Tactics Scales, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, and the National Violence Against Women Survey.

Bibliography:

S. Department of Justice. (2004). Uniform crime reporting handbook. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved May 31, 2017, from https://ucr.fbi.gov/additional-ucr-publications/ucr_handbook.pdf/view
S. Department of Justice. (2005). Crime in the United States 2004: Uniform crime reports. Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved May 8, 2006, from https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/

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