Crime Reporting & Rates Response

The purpose of major crime-reporting programs is to keep track of crimes that are being committed. These crime-reporting programs report when, where, why, and what types of crime that is being committed. Law enforcement agencies use these programs to help reduce the crime rates, and use to see if the criminal activity is decreasing or increasing in communities. Accuracy makes a successful crime-reporting program in the United States. If the information that is being reported is not accurate, the program will not be a success. In addition to accuracy in the reports, all crimes must be reported, but sometimes many cases do not get reported and that can cause some crime in the communities to fall through the cracks. Once a crime has been reported into the system, it is difficult to try to take it out; therefore, sometimes the crimes just do not get reported.

Clearance rates are a measure of crimes solved by the police. The relation of crime rates relates to arrest rates, and clearance rates are indicted by the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). These are used by various criminal justice groups as a measure of crimes solved by the police. Clearance rates can be very problematic for measuring the performance of police services and for comparing various police services and this is possible because different police forces may employ a different way of measuring clearance rates. I think the number of clearance rates will vary depending on the crime rates in the precinct, reported or unreported.

Reference

Schmalleger, F. (2011). Criminal Justice Today: An introductory text for the twenty-first century (11th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ. Pearson Prentice Hall.