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The Uniform Crime Report Essay

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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 …show more content…

Criminal profilers can use the information from the Uniform Crime Report to presume that the shooter was that of another African American man, possibly gang related.
Although a crime is reported in the Uniform Crime Report does not mean that the arrestee in that crime is representative of the population. It is easy to misinterpret the Uniform Crime Report and generalize a certain race or even gender to a particular crime. We often see poor, nonwhite males in the Uniform Crime Report for committing Part I crimes. This diverts the attention away from the wealthy white businessman who might be a part of white-collar crime. White-collar crime is hardly represented in this type of crime measurement (Barkan, 2012). However, measurements of crime using the Uniform Crime Report are not completely accurate either. Local police officers often do not report crimes that they think are not substantial enough. Only the more serious crimes (Part I crimes) are the ones that they feel deserve the time and effort doing paper work for to be reported in the Uniform Crime Report. This means that a lot of Part II cases go unreported by police and, once again, the white-collar crimes are over looked meaning the Uniform Crime Report is not accurate (Barkan, 2012). The only crimes that can be reported into the Uniform Crime Report are ones that are known by police. In some instances,

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