Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)

Police departments and city officials are in a constant battle to display to the public a declining crime index. Some agencies are under public pressure to control crime and take part in scrupulous activities to recode crimes to show a declining crime rate. Agencies can misreport or not report crime at all to create an illusion of crime reduction.

Uniform Crime Report refers to an annual compilation of data pertaining to criminal offenses that take place in the United States. The Uniform Crime Report contains information about criminal offences that take place in the United States of America. Offenses can be categorized as robbery, criminal homicide, forcible rape, burglary, aggravated assault, arson, motor vehicle theft and larceny- theft. The report often goes ahead to analyze the data and make inferences about crime in the United States. The report always includes cases of arrest, clearance and any information pertaining to law enforcement data.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s UCR’s definition of manslaughter that is labeled as non-negligent and murder the killing, willfully, of one individual by another.(UCR, 2011)

In today’s world there is always some form of homicide, and most of these homicides tend to come from shootings. Now, when an officer is dispatch to a crime scene they have to take a detail report, but being that they are human sometimes they may miss or do not report everything in writing. When this happens it can create a gap in the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program system once it is sent to them for statistical recording. Within this paper we will examine how school shootings with the hope of gain an understanding of how data reporting is important to the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Organization.

Crime is not an easy concept to define and is very problematic. The two proposed definitions offered by Dr. Hutchinson of crime is behavior that violates laws and behavior that violates morality. These two definitions often do not correspond with each other. In the case of behaviors that violate morality, there is not a plaintiff. Examples of behavior that violates morality are white collar crime and prostitution. These crimes usually do not involve victims of any kind but are just simply illegal due to norms and morals of society. Society is also morally opposed to them or does not like the kinds of people who are committing these acts. Law violating crimes usually involve a victim. Usually, this victim brings charges against the accused and

Paraphrasing: The murder rate has drastically increased over these last couple of years. This is happening because more and more people are buying firearms and using

There are two programs that measure the magnitude, nature, and impact of crime in the nation. One of them is the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR). The UCR was originally started with only reporting seven major offenses. Which were: murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny (theft) and motor vehicle theft. Later on it mandated for an arson to be added therefore making it the eight we have now. The UCR program uses data collected from law enforcement received every month to come up with its report. Along with the numbers for trends and counts for crime. The report has much more information as well. Such as who was arrested, their age, gender, and race.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) is a nationwide, involving systems with thousands of statistical information by city, county, and state law enforcement agencies voluntarily reporting data on crimes brought to their attention. Not only is this program supported by local law enforcement agencies, but also by Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Its primary objective is to generate a reliable set of criminal statistics for use in law enforcement administration, operation, and management. It gathers and draws its information from a category of crime index and rate of crime. These include the violent crimes of "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes

From a business perspective, and when dealing with the more violent crimes, the Uniform Crime Report would be more accurate. Crimes such as murder or a kidnapped child are crimes that can usually be counted on to be reported. The only down fall is that the UCR only reports crimes that are reported to the police. Crimes that are frequently not reported to the police can include, but are not limited to sexual assualt and household theft. In the business stand point, we can only assume how many rapes actually occur in the United States. Even with this downfall, I feel that the UCR is more accurate than using surveys due to the fact that we are not relying souly on whether or not a victim is being honest or that the survey will be filled out at

The subject of this book dealt with the idea of how this discrepancy between the reality of crime, the public’s perception, and government expenditures has come to pass. Also what are its consequences for the quality of life in the United States? The misperception between what the public believes and what politicians tell us was created because politicians search for publicly approved issues, local law enforcement agencies support the uniform crime report (UCR) findings, the media is always looking for sensational news. “ the police and the FBI are joined by the media in the never-ending search for sensational topics that will titillate and exacerbate the fears and anxieties of the viewing public and, not coincidentally, increase the number

In 2016, 17, 250 (4.5%) murders in the US compared to Houston’s 302 (12.9%) with a difference of 8.4% difference ("FBI Federal Crime Data," 2013-2016, p. 1). For the most part, three major cities pushing the national murder rate up higher than any other portion of the country is Baltimore (133 in 2015), Chicago (67 in 2015) and Houston (61 in 2015) ("US murder rate," 2016, p. 1). In comparison, these three cities are also at the top for aggravated assaults. The murder and aggravated assault rates are primarily gang and domestic issue related with gangs taking the front on the murder rate with gun violence. Guns are used more than 60% of the time used in the commission of these crimes.

Canada has two prominent statistics used to measure crime. Firstly, there is the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR), which is made of crimes recorded by the police. As Jason Ditton (1979), a Constructionist, once pointed out that crime reports “have little to do with the amount of crime” but rather it is simply just a constructed report by the police. On the other hand, we have the General Social Survey (GSS), a victimization survey, which is conducted over a six to twelve month period (Statistics Canada, 2016). The goal of this survey is to “shed light on which people failed to contact the police and why” by asking them questions regarding their living conditions, experiences of victimization and their thought on safety (Morden and Palys, 2015, pg 80). This paper will talk about how both statistics are measured, how they are different, how they are able to complement each other and lastly how accurate they are.

Great post with some very valid points, however, I am not a hundred percent sure that I can agree that the Uniform Crime Reporting program is the absolute best way to effectively measure delinquency. I am not saying that is the wrong answer either, but it is hard for me personally to point my finger to that exact area and say…that is it. The major dispute that I have is the fact it is solely based on descression. Police have the ability to ignore a situation delinquency if they so choose with a simple verbal warning, and it remains an unrecorded statistic. In addition, the UCR is completely voluntary the agencies that report the statistics varies from each report to the next (McCord, Spatz Widom & Crowell, 2001.) Correspondingly, with the UCR

1. The Uniform Crime Rate, or UCR, is put out yearly by the FBI with information gathered from agencies throughout the nation. The reports utilized in the compilation of the UCR generally deal with felony and violent crimes, including crimes such as murder, rape, and arson. Furthermore, according to the U.S. Department of Justice website detailing info about the UCR, “Law enforcement agencies report arrest data for 21… crime categories”. After undergoing an examination process to highlight and explain any errors or discrepancies, the report is put out in the year following the data gathering and it is always followed by an additional report: Crime in the United States. This follow-up report deals not only with the statistics of the crimes reported, but also “includes data on crimes cleared, persons arrested…, law enforcement personnel, and the characteristics of homicides” (U.S. Department of Justice). The UCR deals only with crimes reported to law enforcement and does not take into account any other crimes.

Handguns were used most often in homicides, most cases being in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s before falling to a low in 2008 (Cooper, et al.). Most gun involvement occurs with gang related activity, which increased from 73% in 1980 to 92% in 2008 (Cooper, et al.). The percentage of homicide victims killed with a gun increased with age of the victim until age 17, where it peaked at 79% and declined thereafter (Cooper, et al.). The sharp increase in homicides from the mid-1980’s through the early 1990’s, and much of the subsequent decline, is attributable to gun violence by teens and young adults (Cooper, et al.). From 1980 to 2008, more