Annotated Bibliography

This article argues that there is a clear understanding of what crimes the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) measures. Citizens and the police are both in general agreement about what a serious crime is as it involves many different factors that make it a serious crime. The police and citizens are both part of the decision making process when classifying an incident as an index crime. The decision making process involves the following steps that are taken: defined by the victim, determined by the police, obvious accounts for most of the changes in whether a crime should be reported and officially recorded, personal characteristics of the offender, and the effects suffered by the victim. Studies show that crimes are reported to the police because the victim was greatly affected by the crime committed. Studies even show that not all crimes are reported to the police because the victim has a reason not to. I intend to use this article for my research to for my research project to explain why victims would report or not report a crime to the police.

This article focuses on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the media, and criminologists use the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) as a statistical report in order to interpret the crime rate in the United States. During May of 2011, the UCR showed that crime had significantly decreased to the point that it was the lowest in 40 years despite the fact that the economy was suffering. The article states that criminologists would have wanted the FBI to include white-collar crimes such as insider trading, antitrust violations, and hedge fund conspiracies that happened multiple times during the economic crisis. It also argues that criminologists and the media need to work together when relying on ...

... middle of paper ...

...es. The article discusses further into the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) that was created to partially correct the issues presented in the UCR. The NIBRS was even created to partially correct some of the unanticipated trends regarding race and crime that has been revealed. Scientific research will continue to increase in order to learn more about the nature of UCR data until the errors start to show signs that it is decreasing. I intend to use this article for my research project to describe what criminologists think about the criminal statistics collected by the UCR, and why would criminologists still use the UCR if there are flaws that could make it inaccurate. I also intend to use this article to discover the value of data collected by the UCR that would provide new ways of doing research that address incidents of crime in the United States.