Strengths And Weaknesses Of Crime Reporting

Crime occurs in the United States on a daily basis, it ranges from crime as low as a misdemeanor to crimes that will result in a death penalty. With the tremendous amount of crime occurring in the country there are ways the federal and state governments keep records of the crimes allowing the citizens to seek information about crime rates in certain areas of the country. This information also allows the country to calculate the national crime rate, which in return allows us to know the risk we have of falling victim to serious crimes. There are several ways to gather data on crime, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR), National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are among the most notable sources that provide data on crime. Though these sources have their strengths in reporting data on crime they also contain flaws that can affect the outcome of accurate reports. The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) was established in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of police to meet a need for a reliable and standard form of crime statistics for the nation. “Today the Federal Bureau of Investigation is in charged of collecting UCRs from 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the nation this allows for large amounts of data to be comprehended by the

Just like UCR, NIBRS is a volunteer based report so the data presented in the report are not consistent with the amount of crimes occurring from a day-to-day basis. Human error is also a cause to incorrect data input that can result in false impression of crime statistics. Also the amount of states that adopt the NIBRS system is not adequate enough to justify a national report unlike UCR, which consist of more states. With the adoption of NIBRS many departments drop the system due to the training and resources needed to report accurate reports, this makes finding crime trends