Crime Sticitics

The disagreements over crime statistics have been around since governments began counting criminal activity. In 1930 the United States congress authorized the attorney general of the United States to survey crime in America. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was chosen to implement the program and the Uniform Crime Reports is the survey that is taken by the FBI. The amount of crime that the agency measures will depend on the reports done by the police and by the victims of the crimes. The UCR Program was created by the FBI for the sole purpose of serving as a tool for law enforcement to use in their operations and administrative purposes. Through the International Association of Chiefs of Police also known as the IACP, the UCR Program was developed. Later down the line the National Sheriffs Association also known as the NSA promoted the program and acts in an informative way. (Schmalleger p.39)

Before 1930, no one even knew of the system of crime information on a national scale even existed. As of today it has been almost sixty years that the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program has been collecting crime data from participating states, it has been gathering information either from individual agencies within the states, or directly from state programs. When gathering these statistics they were referred to as Index Crimes. The seven offenses that make up the Index crimes are murder, rape, robbery, aggravate assault, burglary, larceny theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson was added to the offenses in 1979 by congressional mandate,

making it the eighth offense. If a crime is to be found false when it is investigated it is then taken away from the agency count. The number of actual offenses known are reported even if no one is arrested for the crime, stolen property is recovered, or if a suspect is prosecuted.

One of the major problems found with the Uniform Crime Reports is that many people do not always file a report. An example would be if a woman is raped and she refuses to report the rape because she does not think anyone will believe her, and she does not want everyone to know what has happened to her. There are people that feel the police will not be able to do anything about a crime that was committed against them, so they just do not report it. Which in turn brings back the question is UCR really working? In June of 2006, the crime index was discontinued by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Advisory Policy Board also known as UCR/NIBRS. Instead they ask the FBI to use a more simple violent crime totals and property crime totals until a more useful index could be invented. As of today they have yet to come up with an index that will work, it is an ongoing process. (Index Crimes, 2007,)

In the NCVS the survey on crime statistics is from collected data that is collected from different households across the United States. Their survey contains the amount and types of crimes