Uniform Crime Reports

UCR is "a nationwide, cooperative statistical effort of nearly 18,000 city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies voluntarily reporting data on crimes brought to their attention".

Rather, law enforcement agencies across the United States provide the data to the FBI, which then compiles the Reports.

The UCR Program was based upon work by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)[2] throughout the 1920s to create a uniform national set of crime statistics, reliable for analysis.

The committee concluded that eight index crimes were fundamental to comparing crime rates across geographic locations: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft.

[4] The intention of the IACP in developing the UCR program was always to have its management transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Since 1935, the FBI served as a data clearinghouse, organizing, collecting, and disseminating information voluntarily submitted by local, state, federal and tribal law enforcement agencies.

The key recommendations made by the report were 1) a move to requesting data on each individual offense rather than monthly totals, 2) a move to requesting more detailed data about crime incidents including more specific data used to classify offenses and information like the victim and offender's demographic characteristics, their relationship, and the location of the crime, and 3) quality assurance measures like routine audits, minimum reporting-system standards, increased feedback to and from local agencies, and strengthening of state-level UCR Programs.

[6] For many years, the FBI collected UCR data in both the NIBRS and traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS) formats.

In 2015, in consultation with the their law enforcement partners and the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board, the FBI announced that it would be retiring the SRS format.

In 2003, FBI UCR data were compiled from more than 16,000 agencies, representing 93 percent of the population[9] in 46 states and the District of Columbia.

1 Federal and tribal law enforcement agencies report sodomy and sexual assault with an object separately from rape.

The Criminal Justice Information Systems Committees of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the National Sheriffs' Association (NSA) serve in an advisory capacity to the UCR Program and encourage local police departments and sheriff's departments to participate fully in the program.

These organizations foster widespread and responsible use of UCR statistics and assist data contributors when needed.