Criminal Justice Data Collection: The Uniform Crime Report (UCR)

The Uniform Crime Report or the UCR is the official crime data collected by the FBI from the local police. It is not always a hundred percent correct. It uses the Part 1 and Part 2 crimes way to help solve the crimes. Though one of its weaknesses is that some crimes go unreported. Another weakness is that police records are not perfect and only the serious crime is reported. So, some of the crimes in the Part 1 which involves murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, arson, and motor vehicle theft. Whereas Part 2 crimes involves all the other crimes reported to the FBI; which are less serious crimes and misdemeanors, excluding traffic violations. Some of its strengths is that it helps the FBI tally and annually publish the numbers of reported offenses by city, county all other United states. And that is easy to contact them when in needed of turning in a crime.

Official statistics include the UCR, Uniform Crime Report, and NIBRS, National Incident-Based Reporting System. UCR is a summary based reporting system that collects data on the eight index crimes, murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, auto theft, and arson. The UCR is published annually by the FBI, but the data is collected by law enforcement agencies all around the United States. UCR looks at trends of crime and gives statistics of crime in certain areas. Three weaknesses of the UCR is it only reports the highest crime committed, so if someone commits burglary and murders someone in the process the UCR will only report the murder, it only reports crimes known to the police, and not all crimes are reported to enhance the view of cities and areas. Although the UCR has weaknesses, it also has its strengths. Three strengths of UCR are that it has multiple years of data available, almost all law enforcement agencies use this to report crimes, and helps law

UCR or known as the Uniform crime reports is an annual report published by the FBI in the DOJ, which is meant to estimate most of the major street crimes in the United States.The main purpose of the UCR is basically to collect as many crimes or reliable crimes that come up as crime statistics so it can be used in our law enforcement administration. The Ucr is a very helpful tool for the law. The system was created in 1929. It provided information for criminologists,sociologists, and even the media. The Ucr mostly concentrates on assaults and robberies. The NIBRS or the national incident based reporting system is the system that the government uses for gathering data about recent or past crimes. The system has a lot of purposes but one of the main purposes’ is to evaluate the crimes associated with any current culture of violence theories.

The criminal justice system has been proven to play a very important role in society. The criminal justice system is used to keep the citizens in check and to make sure that the laws that are made are being followed. It also is there to penalize anyone who disobeys the laws. In the criminal justice system, there are 3 main parts, law enforcement, adjudication, and corrections. Law enforcement is self-explainable. It consists of the law enforcers such as police officers and sheriffs. Adjudication is made up of people in the court house such as judges and lawyers. Corrections is made up of jailhouse matters such as prison officials. In these many components of the criminal justice system, there are all put in place to help correct people to do the right thing. There are punitive efforts and rehabilitative efforts. At time, the system may lean towards one category or more, which can be dangerous in terms of disciplinary action. The criminal justice system is more punitive than rehabilitative which makes the system ineffective.

The Uniform Crime Report, which was developed in the 1930s, is commonly used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a record of crimes committed all across the United States. These crimes, which fall under two categories, Part I and Part II offenses, are reported by local police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation each year. Part I offenses are considered to be the more serious of crimes recognized by society. Such examples of this are homicide, forcible rape, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft, etc. Part II offenses are those that are considered less serious, such as fraud, simple assault, drug abuse, gambling, stolen property, embezzlement, etc. Part I crimes can also be subdivided into what are known as violent crimes and

The annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) has been the primary method for gathering data and providing these staggering statistics. The NCVS provides information gathered from the victim, which includes information on crimes that went unreported to the police. The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) is also a valid reference for gathering crime information within the United States. The UCR only has information regarding crimes that were reported to the police, as well as arrests. Both forums are used by the FBI. In addition, researchers use this information for their research. Even Taylor and

The Uniform Crime Report and the National Crime Victimization survey are similar in creating data for crime and aim to be accurate as possible and they both are valuable in helping with crime statics. The UCR reports crime and the NCVS aim to look for unreported crimes. However, the purpose of the UCR (Uniform Crime Report) reports to law enforcement agencies accordingly to our textbook (Understanding violence and Victimization, Meadows, Robert-6th ed. P. 3). It helps to enable law enforcement to exchange information about different crimes on a nationwide system, but there is certain information that would not be available because crimes are only reported to

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is one of the two ways crime rates are measured in the United States. The "Uniform Crime Reports" (n.d.) website, UCR is the starting place for law enforcement executives, criminal justice students, members of the media, researchers, and the public seeking information on crime in the nation. The idea of the program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet the need for reliable

In 1927, the Committee on Uniform Crime Records was formed under the direction of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) to create a system for gathering uniform police statistics. The committee first determined how to measure the criminality within the United States. After this was determined, members assessed several crimes and identified seven crimes that would be reportable to the Uniform Crime Reports Program. The Uniform Crime Report is now a nationwide assessment of reported crimes from various law enforcement agencies. Its main purpose is to provide statistical information on crime that can be analyzed for later use in multiple arenas that includes law enforcement administration, operation, and management. It is also used by policy makers, politicians, administrators and the press. Beginning in 1930, now under

In 1929 the Uniform Crime was created by the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Yet, in the year of 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigations became in charge of finalizing information collected for the crime reports. The Uniform Crime Report is an official data on crime that occurs throughout the United States. Once all information is reported from different police department, the Federal Bureau of Investigations breaks down all the collected data into charts. The Uniform Crime Report is statistical information gathered from different police agencies throughout the United States.

While studying Criminology I have gained insight on different techniques used to determine which individuals commit the most crimes. There are three basic methods to measure criminal behavior. These include: Uniform Reporting of Crime, Self- Report and National Crime Victimization Survey. Uniform Reporting of Crime (URC) is a nationwide, cooperative statistical effort of more than 18,000 voluntarily individuals reporting data on crimes (“Federal Bureau of Investigation”1). Self-report surveys measure crime by distributing questionnaires to a sample of people, asking if they have committed any crimes during a period of time. National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a national source that samples about 90,000 households in order to uncover unreported crime and describes the relationship between the victims and the offender (“Bureau of Justice Statistics” 1).

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), was the first of the two programs to be developed. “In, 1930 Congress authorized the U.S. attorney general to survey crime in America” (Schmalleger, 2015). Within its first year, the UCR “received reports from 400 cities in 43 states” (Schmalleger, 2015). Since its inception, the UCR has tracked seven types of crimes. These crimes are “murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft” (Sources of Crime Data: Uniform Crime Reports and the National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2009). There was a revision to the UCR in 1979. This is when this system began to report arson as well (Sources of Crime Data, 2009). In the first year of operation, twenty million people were covered under this survey (Schmalleger, 2015). Today, the UCR compiles data from nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies (Schmalleger, 2015). This data comes “from city, county, and state

UCR and NCVS collect information on age, sex, race, and the circumstances surrounding the crime. In the video link, Christopher Ingraham mentioned it is good to rely on the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Neither one is better than the other, both the FBI and BJS report and gather information and data in different ways. Both programs, the Uniform Crime Report and National Crime Victimization Survey has its advantages and disadvantages. The UCR provides a measure of the number of crimes reported to law enforcement agencies throughout the country and the NCVS is the primary source of information on the characteristics of criminal victimization incidents and on the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement authorities (Planty 2014). UCR and NCVS data can be used in complementary ways to explore why trends in reported and police-recorded crime may differ (Planty

When thinking about Criminal Justice it’s obvious that research is involved in solving crime. But it goes much further than that. Research is actually conducted in Criminal Justice itself. Research is done in Criminal Justice for a number of reasons. Research can be conducted in Criminal Justice for three main reasons; social problems, policy and academics. Then a number of other additional reasons are exploration, description, explanation, application, predictive and finally intervening. Within why research is conducted is another important aspect of Criminal Justice is Methodology; which is how the research is being conducted. Each of these topics will further be explained in depth.

Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) include official information about criminal events that has been provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from the law enforcement agencies that the said crime was first