Uniform Crime Report Vs National Incident Based Reporting System Essay

The Uniform Crime Reports verses The National Incident Based Reporting System

The purpose of this abstract is to critically review the primary data sources used in the criminological research. The two primary data sources discuss in this abstract will be the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). These data sources are reporting mechanism that tracks criminal activities in the United States. This abstract will discuss the strengths, weaknesses and differences of both data sources. To articulate the nature and extent of a crime, criminologists use records that are collected, compiled, and analyzed by government agencies such as the federal government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (criminology

These offenses are serious crimes that are likely to be reported to the police. On a monthly basis law enforcement agencies submit information on the number of Part I offenses. In addition to the part I offenses cleared by arrest or exceptional means; the UCR gives statistics on arrests and characteristics of person arrested including the suspect’s sex, race, and age of individuals who have been arrested for these and all other crimes, except traffic violations ( Criminolgy pg 33). Crimes are cleared in two ways; when at least one person is arrested, charged, and turn over to the court for prosecution or by exceptional means, when some element beyond police control precludes the physical arrest of an offender (crimonolgy pg 33). Also, UCR provides arrest data for Part II offenses. Some critics have argued that local police departments may have altered their statistics to produce internal promotions or departmental positions to support issues relating to crime and crime control that may or may not exist in their vicinity ( jblearning p 63). Most critics acknowledge, that there is potential for manipulation of the data records are not so great as to

Also, majority of the crime victims do not report their experiences or situations to law enforcement agencies participating in the UCR program, leading the data to be flawed with incidences (number of crimes committed) and the prevalence (number of offenders) of crime (jblearning p 63). Not reporting crime to the police, caused disparity between the number of crimes committed and the number of crimes reported to the police which calls into question the reliability of UCR data (jblearning p 63). In regards to the hierarchy rule: single crime incident in which multiple offenses are committed, only the most serious offense is reported. (Arson is the only exception; it is always reported to the FBI.) For example, if an offender robs and murders a victim, only the murder will be reported. Not to put my