The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program compiles official data on crime in the United States, published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). UCR is "a nationwide, cooperative statistical effort of nearly 18,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily reporting data on crimes brought to their attention".

Crime statistics are compiled from UCR data and published annually by the FBI in the Crime in the United States series. The FBI does not collect the data itself. Rather, law enforcement agencies across the United States provide the data to the FBI, which then compiles the Reports.

The Uniform Crime Reporting program began in 1929, and since then has become an important source of crime information for law enforcement, policymakers, scholars, and the media.

History

Formation by the IACP & SSRC and Initial Reports (1927-1930)

The UCR Program was based upon work by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) throughout the 1920s to create a uniform national set of crime statistics, reliable for analysis. In 1927, the IACP created the Committee on Uniform Crime Reporting to determine statistics for national comparisons. The committee concluded that eight index crimes were fundamental to comparing crime rates across geographic locations: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. (From 1930 to 1957, negligent manslaughter was included as an index crime. In 1979, arson would be added as an index crime by a congressional directive.)

The early program was managed by the IACP and published through a monthly report.

Transition to Oversight by the FBI (1930)

The intention of the IACP in developing the UCR program was always to have its management transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). release in May 1985, detailing the necessary revisions. The key recommendations made by the report were 1) a move to requesting data on each individual offense rather than monthly totals, 2) a move to requesting more detailed data about crime incidents including more specific data used to classify offenses and information like the victim and offender's demographic characteristics, their relationship, and the location of the crime, and 3) quality assurance measures like routine audits, minimum reporting-system standards, increased feedback to and from local agencies, and strengthening of state-level UCR Programs.

These recommendations were implemented in the form of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The FBI began accepting data in the new NIBRS format in January 1989. For many years, the FBI collected UCR data in both the NIBRS and traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS) formats. In 2015, in consultation with their law enforcement partners and the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board, the FBI announced that it would be retiring the SRS format. As of January 1, 2021, the SRS has been discontinued and been fully replaced by (NIBRS).

Coverage

Each month, law enforcement agencies report the number of known index crimes in their jurisdiction to the FBI. This mainly includes crimes reported to the police by the general public, but may also include crimes that police officers discover, and known through other sources. Law enforcement agencies also report the number of crime cases cleared.

In 2003, FBI UCR data were compiled from more than 16,000 agencies, representing 93 percent of the population in 46 states and the District of Columbia. While nationally reporting is not mandated, many states have instituted laws requiring law enforcement within those states to provide UCR data.

Data Collection and Publications

The UCR Program has published data on crime in the United States since 1930. In addition, the UCR Program has published more specific reports based on its primary data collection efforts and overseen other data collection efforts related to crime and law enforcement in the U.S.

Crime in the United States

  • National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) - NIBRS collects information about offenses known to and arrests made by law enforcement officers in the U.S. While the FBI began collecting NIBRS-format data in 1989,) Hispanic-origin.
  • Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) - As part of the SRS program, agencies were also asked to submit detailed information about each homicide incident that occurred in their jurisdiction through the SHR. This information included the date, location, and circumstances of the killing, the method used to kill, and demographic characteristics of the homicide victim and the offender. In addition, the Supplementary Homicide Reports included data about incidents of justifiable homicide, that is, non-crime incidents when a private citizen kills someone committing a crime or when law enforcement kills someone while acting in the line of duty. This information is now collected as part of NIBRS.
  • Hate Crime Statistics - As part of the Hate Crime Statistics Act passed in 1990, the UCR began collecting additional information about hate crimes reported through the SRS and NIBRS.
  • Cargo Theft
  • Federal Crime Data
  • Human Trafficking

Law Enforcement Data Collections

  • Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA)
  • Law Enforcement Suicide Data Collection
  • The National Use-of-Force Data Collection

UCR crime categories

thumb|[[FBI Crime Clock – 2014]]

thumb|Violent and Property Crime Indexes per 100,000 population, 2004 Uniform Crime Report

NIBRS Categories

Under the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), offenses are classified as Group A or Group B offenses. Additionally, Group A offenses can fall into one of three sub-categories: crimes against persons, crimes against property, or crimes against society.

Group A (Offenses & Arrests)

Agencies are asked to fill out an incident report for every Group A offense reported to them (or that they otherwise come to know about), regardless of whether an arrest was made. Because reporting quality, arrest likelihood, officers per capita, and funding vary by jurisdiction, the data should not be used to compare crime rates or frequencies between reporting agencies.