Uniform Crime Reports

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The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are crime indexes, published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which summarize the incidence and rate of reported crimes within the United States. The report is used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. UCR is a summary based reporting system, as opposed to the more detailed National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) system.

1 History of the UCR
2 UCR indexes
3 Criticism of the UCR
4 See also
5 External links

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History of the UCR

In 1929, the United States Congress authorized the Attorney General to survey crime rates, and created the UCR. In 1930 the FBI was selected as the agency to head the task. The UCR were based upon earlier work by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

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UCR indexes

The UCR does not use legal definitions of the crimes it indexes; rather, the defintions are based on an internal FBI classifaction system. Much of the data presented via the UCR is expressed in the form of rates ("23.6 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants of region X", for example).

For reporting purposes, criminal offenses are divided into two groups: Part I offenses and Part II offenses.

In Part I, the UCR indexes reported incidents (both actual crimes and unfounded reports) in two categories: violent and property crimes. Aggravated assault, forcible rape, murder, and robbery are classified as violent while arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft are classified as property crimes. These are reported via the document named Return A - Monthly Return of Offenses Known to the Police.

In Part II, the following categories are indexed: simple assault, curfew offenses and loitering, embezzlement, forgery and counterfeiting, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, drug offenses, fraud, gambling, liquor offenses, offenses against the family, prostitution, public drunkenness, runaways, sex offenses, stolen property, vandalism, vagrancy, and weapons offenses.

While Part I is derived from reported crimes, Part II is derived from arrests made.

Two property reports are also included with the Return A. The first is the Property Stolen by Classification report. This report details the number of actual crimes (does not include unfounded reports) of each type in the Return A and the monetary value of property stolen in conjunction with that crime. Some offenses are reported in greater detail on this report than on the Return A. For example, on the Report A, burglaries are divided into three categories: Forcible Entry, Unlawful Entry - No Force, and Attempted Forcible Entry. On the Property Stolen by Classification report, burglaries are divided into six categories based on location type and the time of the offense. Offenses are counted in residences with offense times of 6pm to 6am, 6am to 6pm and Unknown Time and Non-residences with the same three time groupings.

The second property report is the Property Stolen by Type and Value report. The monetary value of both stolen and recovered property are totaled and classified as one of eleven property types:

Currency, Notes, Etc.
Jewelry and Precious Metals
Clothing and Furs
Locally Stolen Motor Vehicles
Office Equipment
Televisions, Radios, Stereos, Etc.
Firearms
Household Goods
Consumable Goods
Livestock
Miscellaneous

The FBI began recording arson rates, as part of the UCR, in 1979. This report details actual and unfounded arsons of the following property types:

Single Occupancy Residential (houses, townhouses, duplexes, etc)
Other Residential (apartments, tenements, flats, hotels, motels, dormitories, etc)
Storage (barns, garages, warehouses, etc)
Industrial/Manufacturing
Other Commercial (stores, restaurants, offices, etc)
Community/Public (churches, jails, schools, colleges, hospitals, etc)
All Other Structures (out buildings, monuments, buildings under construction, etc)
Motor Vechicles (automobiles, trucks, buses, motorcycles, etc)
Other Mobile Property (trailers, recreational vehicles, airplanes, boats, etc)
Other (crops, timber, fences, signs, etc)

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Criticism of the UCR

Critics of the UCR note that they only list reported crimes and is thus, arguably, not useful in learning what the actual crime rates are. Critics note that the index only lists the most serious crime, should a group of crimes be connected; for example, if one was murdered during a car theft. Critics also argue that the index is biased, in that it only lists rapes against women under "forcible rape", and does not list rapes against men, nor does it list same-sex rape. The UCR defines forcible rape as "the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will."

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