Police Report Crime Statistics

Introduction

There has been a debate on whether the data from reported crime statistics is credible for many years. Researchers feel that data is contaminated by differences in law enforcement reporting practices, advancements in technology per agency, and changes in whether victims report or do not report crimes (Levitt, 1998). But still crime reports are still used when determining if current policing practices are effective.

When capturing crime, Regoli & Hewitt (2008) say that “official crime statistics, which are based on the aggregate records of offenders and offenses processed by police, courts, and correction agencies; and unofficial crime statistics, which are produced by people and agencies outside the criminal justice system” are

Both reports are used because there is not enough data from the NIBRS due to the lack of participation from reporting agencies. However, the FBI still creates annual publications using the UCR. As such, the FBI converts data submitted from NIBRS-compliant law enforcement agencies into UCR summary data (James, N. & Council, L, 2008).

What is the Uniform Crime Reports

Commissioned by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) was prepared to provide local law enforcement agencies a manual on standardized crime reporting (Inciardi, 1978). In 1930, Congress authorized the Federal Bureau of Investigations to collect and document voluntary criminal data from local communities, universities, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies. The FBI has the responsibility of compiling and distributing these criminal statistics in the form of a publication known as the UCR.

Benefits of the Uniform Crime

The top similarity among these is that NIBRS data are based on incidents reported to police and recorded by police (Maxfield, 1999).

Voluntary Participation

Participation for both the UCR and the NIBRs are voluntary. This could be problematic in regards to accuracy. Inciardi (1978), states that some agencies “report information to the UCR which is totally unlike that which appears in their own files.” This leaves room for incomplete or contaminated information. For example if a department wanted to make their areas crime rates look better for political reasons, they could “cook the books,” and only report statistics that reflect that. Because these programs are voluntary the volume of these types of incidents is undetermined.

Reporting Processes

The general concepts for obtaining, compiling, rating, and reporting criminal data for the UCR are still applicable for the NIBRS. “For example, the jurisdictional rules for collecting data from city, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies and the conditions under which a state UCR Program must operate remain the same” (Criminal Justice Information Services Division,