Crime Statistics Data Bases

Crime Statistics

The two major sources of crime statistics in the United States are the Uniform Crime Reports and the National Incident-Based Reporting System. The UCR tracks eight crimes and has done so since 1930. There are almost 17,000 law enforcement agencies that report data to UCR. The FBI is the organization that spearheads the UCR and uses that data. One of the main advantages of the UCR is that it draws from such a large sample size, so it can provide an excellent statistical overview of crime in the United States. One of the major disadvantages of the UCR is that it is not easy to use for tracking local crime. There are, of course, the individual law enforcement agencies that report to UCR, but they may or may not publish their data publicly. The UCR is an excellent source for historical data, because it was started in 1930.

The NIBRS is a newer system, having come online in 2004. This means that it does not really compare with UCR in terms of historical data, though it does have modern data since its inception. This system tracks from 5200 or so agencies, representing 20% of the U.S. population. Thus, the sample size is not as large as with UCR, and therefore there might be gaps in the coverage for specific regions or agency types. The NIBRS is an updated version of UCR that the FBI was working on for many years before its inception.

In terms of tracking the NIBRS tracks a total of 46 crimes, where the UCR only tracks eight. This is important because it delivers a more refined data set where users can drill down to specific crime types, instead of just crime groupings, which inevitably is what occurs with the UCR, given its reliance on broader categories for the crime. The UCR's data is merely a tabulation of crime numbers, and does not reflect the deeper data within the crime. The NIBRS sought to remedy this, and therefore it collects much more information about each crime. The NIBRS tracks, for example, information about victims, the relationship between the victim and the offender, injuries, weapons used, arrests made and specific location data, none of which are available from UCR (NIJ.gov, 2016).

One of the other points of refined data is that the UCR only reports the most serious crime committed during a given incident. The NIJ reports that this means if a murderer has raped his victim, only the murder would be recorded. Under NIBRS, this is not the case. Both crimes would be reported. That again allows for more accurate data, and more refined data. Despite being a smaller data set in terms of number of reporting agencies, the NIBRS is a much more sophisticated database and therefore provides much better information that law enforcement agencies can use. The NIBRS was developed with computers in mind, which allows it to be much more thorough, through the use of modern database technology. UCR of course was an analog system, which is why the amount of information that it conveys is more minimal in nature.