Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) is a program that was initiated by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1929 in order to provide a reliable and uniform crime statistics for the country. Generally, this program is a cooperative initiative for city, state, county, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies to provide a country-wide perspective of crime. These agencies basically participate in the program through the provision of summarized reports on several crimes that are known to law enforcement and information regarding arrested people. In addition, these agencies also give reports on the assaulted and killed law enforcement officers as well as information on hate crime.
In most cases, these law enforcement agencies provide the crime reports every month to a common crime records facility within their respective state. Through uniform crime definitions, the state's UCR Program transfers the information to the national UCR Program in the Federal Bureau of Investigations. The information is then compiled, published, and distributed to the participating agencies, other UCR Programs, and interested parties in the country's crime data. Uniform Crime Reporting has been used for a long period of time since its inception because of its effectiveness in providing crime data.
History of Uniform Crime Reporting:
Before examining the effectiveness of Uniform Crime Reporting, it's important to analyze the history of the program and its development to the current state. The commencement of this program can be traced back to 1927 when the International Association of Chiefs of Police established the Committee on Uniform Crime Records. This committee was set up because of the growing need for national crime statistics and as a means for gathering statistics about uniform police.
The initial discovery of the committee was that the number of crimes that are known to law enforcement would be the most suitable means of the country's criminality despite of whether the offenses involved an arrest or not. Following this discovery, members of the committee analyzed several offenses depending on their severity, rate of occurrence, pervasiveness within an area, and possibility of being reported to law enforcement agencies. The results of the analysis led to the identification of seven offenses to be reported to the program. These crimes were auto theft, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, aggravated assault, and felonious homicide ("Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook," 2004).
Since the beginning of their work, the committee discovered that the differences in criminal codes prohibited a simple aggregation of state statistics to achieve a national total. In addition, there were difficulties in identifying the difference between misdemeanor and felony offenses due to different punishments for similar crimes across state codes. Consequently, standardized crime definitions were formulated to avoid the problems and present a nationwide standard in crime reporting. Notably, the established crime definitions provided the basis with which law enforcement agencies were to provide criminal data while disregarding local statutes.
The main achievement of the Committee's work occurred in 1929 when the Uniform Crime Reporting manual for police records and statistics was published. The publication detailed crime definitions for Part I and Part II offenses and detailed procedures for completing monthly return of crimes known to law enforcement. This move was a huge success as law enforcement agencies in 400 cities within 43 states provided crime statistics to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1929. The submission of these statistics resulted in the publication of the first monthly Uniform Crime Report in America. As the Congress enacted legislation for the collection of criminal information in 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigations assumed the responsibility for managing the program in the same year.
Development of Uniform Crime Reporting:
Since its inception in late 1920s, the scope of Uniform Crime Reporting Program has continued to expand in response to various recommendations from advisory groups within the law enforcement agencies. Uniform Crime Reporting has also expanded its scope over the years in attempts to adhere to federal mandates. Some of the major changes that have occurred to it include the incorporation of the national Crime Index in 1958 and the establishment of Supplementary Homicide Report in 1962. The expansion is also evident in the program's commencement of collecting specific information on incidents where police were assaulted or killed in 1978.
As changes continued to occur in the criminal justice field, law enforcement agencies began advocating for the total overhaul and transformation of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. These calls led to the development of a national data collection system to gather information regarding every criminal incident. The culmination of the developments was the complete implementation and operation of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)...
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