Talk:Uniform Crime Reports

Cleanup and Expansion

A couple things I think still need to be done with the article

• Indexes should be discussed in the intro and separate sections on part I and II offenses should be created
• Most of the information in the index section is incorrect

e.g. lack of legal definition, Part I and II are not differentiated by arrest and report but are different types, etc

• Merge Index offenses article(stub) into this article, consider redirect
• Expansion of History section, Clearance rate, Validity, Future merger with NIBRS

I'll work on these as soon as I have some more time. Any further suggestions for expansion and cleanup would be appreciated. CRobey 17:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly recommend against merging UCR with NIBRS. They are very different approaches to crime statistics and should remain separate. According to the FBI (see http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/faqs.htm) not even a quarter of the data collected by the UCR program (about 16%) came from NIBRS as of 2004. Granted, that was six years ago, but considering law enforcement agencies are generally slow to change, and there are major budget problems, I would not be surprised if that figure hasn't changed much. Ometecuhtli2001 (talk) 22:42, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Criticism of the UCR

I have boldly attempted clean up of this section. See what you think. :) Dlohcierekim 00:38, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It's pretty good. I might expand on it when I get the chance. The ranking of crimes by seriousness is known as the hierarchy rule, which I have a little information about it that I can put in. I have a couple journal articles which talk about the 'dark figure' of unreported crimes in regards to the UCR. As for the rape, they do list it as a crime specifically against females. For males they consider the crime either an assault or sexual offense, which are Part II crimes.

The reason the UCR only list rape as females by males is that in California the law is written as female by male and I am sure that many other states laws are similar.

No it isn't. The criminal code in California which defines the elements of rape is PC 261, which begins: "Rape is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person not the spouse of the perpetrator, under any of the following circumstances..." The legal definition of a crime and the UCR definition of a crime are two totally different things. Ometecuhtli2001 (talk) 22:31, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

UCR vs NCVS Image

I added an image I created from 2003/2004 UCR and NCVS data

UCR violent crime arrests: 586,558 (2004)

UCR violent crime reported: 1,367,009 (2004)

NCVS violent crime reported: 5,401,720 (2003)

It wasn't quite to scale. The two UCR sections are slightly larger than they should be, but I think it still gives the same idea. The unknown factor assumes an extra ~500,000 unreported violent crimes (conservative estimate). I think it's fairly representative but would be happy to modify it if anyone has suggestions. CRobey 18:09, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Wiki Vandalism (20/06/07)

This is currently the talk page where an international en WP user lands after entering a search request for "report vandalism" on the main page. You should fix that for those who want to report vandalism on the wider project. I am tired of the worthless, counter-intuitive help files here.

.s

X ile 07:21, 21 June 2007 (UTC) - Talk

Question

Has there been any research done into false reports to the FBI for UCR by local jurisdictions? The reason I ask is because the former sheriff of Caroline County, Virginia is claiming that he had 90% of his cases solved when he was sheriff and I noticed that the national clearance rate for violent crimes is only 45.5% and for property crimes is only 16.3% in 2005.

67.142.130.18 08:31, 30 July 2007 (UTC)