The Uniform Crime Reporting - Research Paper Example

Criminology UCR and NIBRS Crime Data Criminology UCR and NIBRS Crime Data Introduction Any crime statistic should be based on best measure of offenses, and whose objective is to offer a complete picture regarding the level of offenses and the victimization. Such criminal data are then used to generate tools that shape policies that could be constructive in fighting and minimizing likelihood of repeated criminal offenses (Samaha, 2005). Hence, crime data in US is mostly measured from three distinctive data sources, namely the UCR, NIBRS, and the National Crime Victimization Survey. The Uniform Crime Reporting or UCR is generated by FBI every year, and it compiles not just the crime incidences, but also the level of reported crimes from each law enforcement jurisdiction. Secondly, the National Incident-Based Reporting System or NIBRS compiles crime data from law enforcement agencies regarding personal crime occurrences reported to them. The NIBRS is collected from local, regional, state, and federal law enforcement agencies (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009). The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the Uniform Crime Report, and the National Incident-Based Reporting System as the primary crime data sources used in the United States. Discussion Methodologies of UCR and NIBRS The Uniform Crime Reporting program is an FBI data collection program started in 1929, and it is based on gathering of data on a number of crimes as reported to law enforcement authorities by the victims (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009). The program documents crime data for the entire nation including the states, counties, the cities, colleges, towns, and even the tribal law-enforcement regions. This widespread recording allows crime assessments between neighboring jurisdictions, especially those with comparable populations. On the other hand, the National Incident Based Reporting System is a crime reporting system that is incident-based for offenses known to the police forces. Hence, any crime incident in which the law enforcement authorities become aware of, an assortment of data are collected regarding that particular incident. The individual law enforcement agencies are then required to include aggregate number of crime occurrences by offense every month (Akiyama & Nolan, 1999). The UCR reporting categorizes eight crimes to be reported by the agencies, and they include criminal murder, rape, theft, aggravated assault, and burglary. Others include larceny, robbery, and automobile theft. Following the UCR substantial methodological redesign in 1970, the questions under NIBRS were enhanced, so as to bring crime reporting up to date, and to widen the range of crimes measured (Schmalleger, 2009). Thus, the redesigned NIBRS report contains detailed information regarding frequency and character of crimes, such as white-collar crimes, drug and narcotics offenses, hate crimes, child and elder abuse, as well as terrorism related crimes. In addition, the survey contains data on child pornography, juvenile crimes and organized crimes, but it does not gauge homicide or other commercial crimes like burglaries involving stores. Currently, the UCR mirrors a national effort comprising over 17000 policing agencies, and this is nearly 95% of the nation total law enforcement agencies (Schmalleger, 2009). The FBI accumulates data regarding the number of offenses acknowledged to the law enforcement agencies, the figure and nature of individuals arrested, in addition to the number of approved clearances for the eight dissimilar offenses. Notably, the UCR report offers data on various arrests and nature of individuals arrested for a given crime. Also, through its Supplementary Homicide Report, the UCR report contains data specifying the murder victim and perpetrator age, gender, and race, in addition to the nature of weapon applied during the murder (Justice Research and Statistics Association, 2013). The UCR requires the police to state the relationship that existed between the victim and the perpetrator including the state of affairs surrounding every incident. Above all, the UCR measures the intensity and allotment of crimes and the responses instigated by that particular region law enforcement authority. Critics of the UCR program argue that a huge portion of crimes go unreported under the program, since most victims tend not to notify police agencies as they believe that the given crime is either private or based on personal issues, and some even argue that they fear reprisals (Maxfield, 1999). This makes the UCR report to have uneven agency reporting, which is then made worse by different definition interpretation, as well as letdown to count particular category of offenses consistently. Criminologists like Schmalleger refer to this gap between the unreported crimes and reported crimes as Dark Figure of Crime, in particular crimes like drug offenses, tax evasions or in some instances insurance frauds, since they are not captured under UCR compilation (2009). The three key categories of data under the UCR report include the crimes reported to the police force, arrest statistics, as well as clearance statistics. Under each recorded crime, there needs to the recording of the offender sex, race, along with age. The data includes crimes referred to as Part I offenses, namely aggravated assault, break-in, larceny, theft, auto theft, in addition to arson. The crime nature under UCR excludes simple assaults but it includes only those arrested for what it refers to as Part II offenses, namely murder, non-negligent homicide, forcible rape, and burglary. Hence, the law enforcement authorities are required to report arrest information for these phase II offenses numbering twenty one in total. On the other hand, the NIBRS documents data on personal crimes and household offenses. The information collected comprises the nature and forms of specific crimes within the incident, including the nature of the victim and that of the offender. A key aspect of NIBRS is that, incident-based statistics offer a vast amount of information regarding crimes, and when these data is organized in multifaceted ways it mirrors the many diverse forms of crime occurrences (Samaha, 2005). In addition, the data collected under NIBRS comprises the type of property and its worth either stolen or recovered, including the characteristics of individuals arrested in relation to that particular crime incident. The personal crimes include rape and sexual assault, robbery and aggravated murder. The household offenses include burglary, theft and auto theft. All of these crimes are categorized as Crimes of Interest, since the victims are able to recall and report the incidences to law enforcement agencies (James & Council, 2013). Besides the Group A crimes being recorded in NIBRS, 11 other Group B crimes for which arrest data are available is also documented. The set comprises individual incident descriptions under the eight index crimes and 46 other offenses (Akiyama & Nolan, 1999). Moreover, NIBRS contains information on current widespread crimes like computer cyber crimes, terrorism, insider trading and public-order crimes and this makes it to encompass a bigger sub-set of all the crimes committed in US. A key aspect of NIBRS program is that, incident-based statistics offer a vast amount of information regarding crimes, and when these data is organized in multifaceted ways, it mirrors the many diverse forms of crime occurrences (U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 2009). The details filled are the offense itself, the victim and perpetrator details in terms of age, sex, ethnicity, and residential area. Furthermore, the detail of the property stolen or recovered is also presented. Other details collected includes whether it is a concurrent offense, the weapons used, injury sustained, the location, the value of property loss, and the characteristics of not just the victim but the offender and person arrested (Addington, 2008). Roughly 29% of the entire US population is under NIBRS reporting, which mirrors 27% of US total reported criminal offenses (Justice Research and Statistics Association, 2013). The NIBRS covers 43% of US law enforcement organizations and for each of the crime incident coming to the awareness of the police, certain form of facts regarding every offense is reported. While the UCR record covers a broader area with all the 50 states law enforcement agencies submitting their data, in addition to some overseas U.S. territories, the NIBRS currently covers 32 states with only 3 other additional states having single agencies reporting NIBRS data (Justice Research and Statistics Association, 2013). Furthermore, only 15 states with a total coverage of 100% of their police force, are the only ones fully reporting their incident-based information to the FBI, amounting to 43% of US total law enforcement agencies. This comes to about 29% of the US population being covered under the NIBRS program, equaling to 27% of US documented crimes (Justice Research and Statistics Association, 2013). The key strength of NIBRS program is that, it offers the basis for information regarding the nature of criminal victimization, in addition to the number and forms of crimes documented to law enforcement agencies. Similarities and Implications Firstly, both programs comprise only crimes that have been reported to the police forces without taking into consideration the unreported crimes. The argument is that crimes that are known to law enforcement agencies would be the most proper gauge of the occurrences of crime. However, critics like Mosher, Miethe, & Phillips (2002) observes that such a reporting contains only a small sample of nationwide wide criminal acts, and this ignores the need for an all-inclusive incident founded statistics. Such an initiative also disregard the fact that numerous crimes which go unreported are due to what victims consider as personal issues, fear of reprisal or embarrassing scenarios. Secondly, the methodologies applied by both UCR and NIBRS are subject to precincts and causes of error, which can then impact the quality, precision, and dependability of their estimates. This then affect their influences especially when comparing data generated by both of them (Samaha, 2005). Thirdly, both of them are rather voluntary programs, since under the UCR and NIBRS guidelines and individual state rules, there is no mandatory reporting, as such, some agencies may not submit information even for one year. Additionally when it comes to the interview sessions, the respondents are not under any legal or else evidentiary standards when reporting. The respondents have a higher chance of recalling events erroneously, especially due to memory errors, telescoping, and deception especially those that could be self incriminating, unpleasant or discomforting to them. Therefore, the two programs raise the issue of unreliability and biases in terms of their data quality, hence, making their victimization approximations to be subject of both sampling plus non-sampling errors (Schmalleger, 2009). Also, both programs methods of categorizing criminal acts are not based on federal or even state definitions, as they have reconstructed their own terminology as regards to criminal acts. It is this individual agency definition of terminologies that raises the issue of high rate of non-responsive biases especially under violent crimes reporting in NIBRS. Another similarity between the two programs is the manner in which rate-measures are presented for crimes such as burglary, household theft, or automobile theft in the two programs. In particular, both the NIBRS and UCR rate-measures for such crimes are mostly based on per-capita or the figure of crimes for every 100,000 persons (Mosher, Miethe, & Phillips, 2002). Hence, both contain data on an overlapping and distinguishable collection of offenses. As a result, this recording of data on an overlapping and non-matching population makes the trend statistics for both of them not to be comparable. Furthermore, both the UCR and NIBRS only allow the differentiation of Time and Place rule when categorizing and scoring offenses (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009). As such, the police force have to apply the separation of time and place rule, in order to ascertain if a collection of offenses needs to be reported as either an individual incident, or as one incident with multiple offenses taking place. Also, both of them differentiate between offenses against persons and offenses against property. But since the NIBRS Group-A crimes cannot be categorized as offenses against persons or property as they do not encompass actual victims or the property is not classified as object of an offense, there is the inclusion of another scoring grouping referred to as offenses against society (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009). Such offenses include drugs or narcotics crimes, gambling, pornography and obscene material offenses, as well as prostitution. Another similarity between the two programs is that they document arrests within a particular incident, and whereby the actual count of crimes has been reported to the law enforcement jurisdictions. Therefore, in some situations, both the NIBRS and UCR data are just simply projected for the non-participating law enforcement jurisdictions, the same case to even those jurisdictions documenting partial data. This is compounded by the fact that both programs do not have rigorous statistical techniques in calculating magnitude of crime sampling variation linked with crime estimates. That is why the trend data under NIBRS are allowed even monthly changes of less than 90% certainty (Akiyama & Nolan, 1999). Thus, since both programs are not based on sampling variation estimates, the concerned law enforcement agencies are not able to determine indications of monthly or yearly discrepancies, and comparison of both data only entails the comparison of their statistics. This has then brought out a trend whereby yearly shifts in individual crime grouping nationally from the UCR, being lower than the confidence intervals derived from NIBRS estimates. This then raises questions regarding assumptions in terms of incongruity of statistics, and Lynch & Jarvis (2008) attributes this to definitional plus procedural variations between the two programs. Both the UCR and NIBRS program data are required to mirror offense counts, and not simply the assessments of the prosecutor or even the conclusions of a court, the coroner, or a jury. Hence, uniformity is emphasized in both programs during categorization and scoring/ attaining of criminal transgressions across jurisdictions. The objective is to maintain the integrity of both crime data collection programs. For instance, any effort to steal an automobile should be categorized and scored as automobile theft. That is why the key strength of both the UCR report and NIBRS program is that they offer a computation of the number of crimes documented to the police force throughout the nation. They both permit analyses at various geographic levels, which make it possible to verify crime data for cities, states and regions (Samaha, 2005). Moreover, both programs records crime information from victims of all ages, without considering the age, or whether the respondent is the victim or offender. The offender, arrestee and victim section comprises information regarding their gender, ethnicity, residential status and race. However, studies reveal that imputation techniques applied by FBI in estimating crimes in jurisdictions which have not reported their UCR and NIBRS data for an entire year generate questionable assumptions (Akiyama & Nolan, 1999). The argument is that by estimating a complete year value of data for agencies who have reported 3 months of data unreservedly, only makes an assumption that crime rate in that jurisdiction for those unreported months is similar to those reported months. Such an assumption ignores the fact that cities or towns are not similar in terms of sized populations, and it also ignores that other additional factors might impact the crime rate, especially unemployment rates, the population density, or even racial composition (Lynch & Jarvis, 2008). Addington ( 2008) in his study observed that the victims reporting under NIBRS interviews are prone to prejudice which then results in change estimates. That is why when it comes to violent crimes reporting, the overall response rates are 46% in big cities and 52 % response rate for smaller cities (Addington, 2008). Given that the UCR and NIBRS are just a compilation of monthly reports and individual crime occurrence records conveyed directly to FBI, there is a thorough assessment of every report with reasonableness, precision, and deviations. Hence, any massive discrepancies in terms of crime levels points out to customized records procedures or partial reporting especially due to adjustments in jurisdiction boundaries. To counter such unusual trends, the UCR compares its monthly reports to preceding submissions including those for analogous agencies (Justice Research and Statistics Association, 2013). Critics of the UCR program also argue that it reveals information regarding law enforcement authorities’ behaviors than the perpetuators of such crimes and criminality. This is evident by a study done by National Centre for Policy Analysis in 2002 in which in excess of 22,000 was left unreported by the police to the FBI (Lynch & Jarvis, 2008). Thus, the argument is that the system is vulnerable to systematic underreporting by the police in order to intentionally downgrade their jurisdiction crime level. Differences and Implications Firstly, unlike the NIBRS program whereby offenses are categorized as either Group A or Group B offenses, the UCR report does categorizes crimes as either Part I offenses, or 21 other offenses defined as Part II offenses. Hence, the UCR does not take into account crimes like homicide, arson, drug related offenses, and commercial crimes since Part I offenses were formerly acquired from the crime index. This is because unlike the NIBRS which is a comprehensive system, the UCR is a summary system which documents the total figure of Part I identifiable offenses and only the number of arrests conducted under the Part II offenses (Schmalleger, 2009). In particular, the arrest data under UCR only reveals the entire figure of individuals arrested under Part II offenses, such as vandalism, prostitution or liquor laws. This is because the UCR program is aimed at restricting the reporting of crimes identified to the eight elected crime classifications, as they are most probable to take place and be reported with a high level of frequency. On the other hand, NIBRS records Group A offenses having46 dissimilar offenses that are then classified into a 22 offense category, and also Group B offenses which contains 11 other different offenses. Hence, the NIBRS unlike the UCR has 22 crime sub-classification compared to the UCR which keep track of eight categories of crimes (Maxfield, 1999). Under NIBRS, the crimes are categorized into 46 separate infractions in order to permit additional information concerning both victim and offenders. This is because the intention of NIBRS data collection is to act as a derivative of local-incident-based reporting mechanisms referred to as IBR. For that reason, the NIBRS gives room for local and individual states law enforcement agencies to come up with their own incidence-based reporting systems, which fits their local requirements. Contrary to the UCR system, the NIBRS allows the data collected from states to have additional data elements and data sets using their own developed IBR classification system, but this is only when the state fulfills FBI NIBRS specifications (Truman, 2011). Secondly, in cases where similar crimes are reported the definitions still vary significantly. The definitions under NIBRS are much more comprehensive compared to crime and victim definitions on UCR. For instance under the UCR program, burglary is defined as the unlawful access or an attempted entry of a premise in order to conduct a felony or theft. But, under the NIBRS program, burglary is stated as the entry or the attempted access of a residence by an individual with no right to be at that residence (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2009). Also, the definition of rape under UCR program is one-sided and defined as carnal projection of a female by force and against her will, and as such, it only considers the female only as the victim. But under the NIBRS program, the definition of rape or sexual assault can be carried out against both males and females. This is attributed to the scheme that the NIBRS does not intend at asking the victims questions that aimed at making certain the offender motives compared to UCR (Miller, 2009). The NIBRS accumulates data founded on both the injured party and the perpetrator. It also comprises data based on a crime regardless of whether an arrest has been made or not. Hence, the UCR emphasizes on the criminology aspects while the NIBRS emphasizes on both the criminology aspect and victimology aspect (Samaha, 2005). Thirdly, since the UCR report is more of a summary classification compared to NIBRS, there is no means of determining if a certain offense was cleared or solved through an arrest, or if an arrest was conducted when in pursuant to the given offense. As such, the UCR report does not require arrests or exceptional clearances to be connected to specific offenses incidents, unlike the NIBRS which requires the connection between the arrests or extraordinary clearances to be associated with a particular crime incident (Miller, 2009). The NIBRS is able to differentiate between the attempted and accomplished offenses especially given the fact it, offers details for additionally expanded crimes. The NIBRS thus provides room for arrest analysis to be done as it connects the report to the arrest data. Furthermore, information detailed on the UCR is based on hierarchy regulations, whereby only the most grievous criminal act is documented from a single collection of offenses in which multiple crimes were done. On the contrary, the NIBRS requires that all category offenses in a given incidence to be recorded by the police (Truman, 2011). For instance, if a suspect is found to have robbed and murdered the victim, then the murder is the one that will be reported in the UCR report, since it considered under the report as the most serious of the offenses. Conversely, the NIBRS program covers information regarding each of the incident dissimilar offenses, and with a space for up to an upper limit of ten other additional offenses. Therefore, the NIBRS information can be applied in analyzing how frequent and on what state of affairs certain offenses, like say break-ins and rape do occur concurrently. Another difference is that current standards within the UCR categorizes the Part I criminal deeds into two classes, and these are violent individual crimes and the property offenses. Based on that, the UCR classifies violent individual crimes to be in form of murder, rape, provoked assault, in addition to robbery. The property crimes are stated as arson, automobile thefts, burglary, as well as larceny and lately hate crimes have become part of UCR database (James & Council, 2013). Conversely, the NIBRS program simply furnishes data on almost every common criminal justice matters where criminality is implicated in US ranging from weapon offenses, to terrorism, to drug offenses, missing children and even parental abductions (Samaha, 2005). Most significantly, rather than just focusing on street crimes the NIBRS record provides data on other crimes, like embezzlement or commercial crimes. The NIBRS is so wide in scope that majority of crimes that are common in America, such as illegal drugs or crimes against commercial premises are also reported under the program. Also, the hotel rule under burglary offenses in UCR program applies in cases where multiple units under one manager when leased or rented are burglarized and the crimes are scored as a single burglary (Samaha, 2005). But under NIBRS program, the hotel rule refers to burglary of rental storage units, and as such, the police force should report the total number of premises that were burglarized and not as a single unit like in UCR reports (James & Council, 2013). Based on these differences, it is not wise to contrast crime trends in both the UCR report and NIBRS program, since their methodology along with crime coverage vary. Notably, the two programs assess the nation criminal issues from diverse angles, which then make their results not to be somewhat comparable. Thus, the definitional and practical differences can give a reason to other numerous but noticeable discrepancies in terms of results from the national program. Given that both programs involve comprehensive data collection measures, they are vulnerable to numerous sources of error. While the UCR program normally has a police officer categorizing a particular crime improperly, the NIBRS can have the victim providing incorrect responses to a particular crime. This then makes both crime data susceptible to how the victim perceives or calls to mind the crime event (Akiyama & Nolan, 1999). Conclusion This paper has provided an overview of both the NIBRS and UCR programs as the major sources of crime data in US. The paper has provided a critical overview of both the differences and similarities between the two programs. While the UCR program measures offenses reported to police, the NIBRS documents information derived from both the injured party and the offender. While the key goal of UCR program is to offer a reliable collection of criminal-justice statistics, the NIBRS objective is to improve the quantity, quality, along with aptness of crime information for the law enforcement agencies. Even though both the UCR and NIBRS programs use almost dissimilar methodologies, they only measure crimes that have been reported to law enforcement agencies. Hence, they do not consider the numerous crimes which go unreported, and this ignores the fact that other numerous crimes go unreported due to what the victims consider as private issues, fear of reprisal or embarrassing scenarios. The paper has also evaluated the advantages of the programs based on their methodologies, and concludes that the NIBRS compared to UCR report provides the capacity to break down and merge crime offense statistics into explicit information. This then enables the NIBRS to provide law enforcement agencies the capacity to link information regarding the various aspects of a particular offense in a given incident. The most formidable benefits of both the UCR report and the NIBRS report is that, when combined they provide a more methodical and comprehensive representation of national crime data. This then provide room for researchers to better understand criminal acts and criminal behavior. The paper concludes that since crime as an event is not straightforwardly observable, it becomes hard to use a single measure in getting all information regarding the extent and nature of crime. It is only by properly applying both UCR and NIBRS data programs concurrently, that the crime issues can be dealt with in a much broader scope as they were premeditated to harmonize each other. Although both the UCR program information and NIBRS program data are somehow different, crime data users can apply the output from both of them in a complementary manner, in order to better evaluate crime occurrences and law enforcement participation References Addington, L. A. (2008). Assessing the Extent of Nonresponse Bias on NIBRS Estimates of Violent Crime. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 24(1), 32-49. Addington, L. A. (2009). Studying the Crime Problem with NIBRS Data: Current Uses and Future Trends. New York: Springer . Akiyama, Y., & Nolan, J. (1999). Methods for Understanding and Analyzing NIBRS Data. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 15(2), 225-238. James, N., & Council, L. R. (2013, March 2). CRS Report in Congress:How Crime in the United States Is Measured. Retrieved from https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34309.pdf Justice Research and Statistics Association. (2013, March 2). Status of NIBRS in the States. Retrieved from http://www.jrsa.org/ibrrc/background-status/nibrs_states.shtml Lynch, J., & Jarvis, J. (2008). Missing Data and Imputation in the Uniform Crime Reports and the Effects on National Estimates. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 24(1), 69-85. Maxfield, M. G. (1999). The National Incident-Based Reporting System: Research and Policy Applications. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 15(2), 1-123. Miller, J. M. (2009). 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook, Volume 1. New York: SAGE. Mosher, C. J., Miethe, T. D., & Phillips, D. M. (2002). The Mismeasure of Crime. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Samaha, J. (2005). Criminal Justice. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Schmalleger, F. (2009). Criminology today: An integrative introduction. New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc. Truman, J. L. (2011). Criminal Victimization (2009). DIANE Publishing. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2009). Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook. Washngton DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation. . Read More