Pros And Cons Of The Uniform Crime Reporting System

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The Uniform Crime Reporting is the most widely used system for recording crimes and making policy decisions (Aspen Publishers, 2010). It has tracked data on seven crimes since 1930 which include murder, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft (Falk, 2010). The UCR started reporting on arson in 1979. About 17,000 law enforcement agencies report UCR data to the FBI but this data has several limitations. The UCR has over the years been the starting place for law enforcement executives, members of the media and the public in seeking information on crime in the nation. In 2010, law enforcement agencies active in the UCR program represented more than 300 million inhabitants in the United States (Siegel, 2009).
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NIBRS is the result of the FBI’s efforts in the 1980s to revise the UCR. This is an incident based reporting system used by law enforcement agencies in the country for collecting and reporting data on crimes. Local, state and federal agencies generate NIBRS data from their records management systems (Falk, 2010). The general concepts of the system such as jurisdictional rules, of collecting and reporting SRS data are the same as the ones in NIBRS.
The system has expanded the definition of rape to include male victims. The utilization of any system requires the individual to understand the definition of what the statistic represents which may cause some confusion for those attempting to research information statistics. A number of states such as Texas and North Carolina use a customized version of the system that returns the basic data required by the FBI (Siegel, 2009). The NIBRS collects data on each single incident and arrest within offense categories made up of 46 specific crimes called group offenses (Walker, 1999). However, full participation in NIBRS necessitates that an agency must have the data processing and other resources needed to meet all NIBRS requirements. Because reports are more detailed, there is increased data entry and data processing which creates an increased burden on the system. Agencies should hence have sufficient data processing and other resources to fulfill all reporting requirements of the system (Falk,