Crime in the United States

Since 1996, editions of Crime in the United States have been available on the FBI’s Web site www.fbi.gov presenting data tables containing information on listed topics.

For information about how the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) collects data, see about the UCR.

Data provided

Offenses Known to Law Enforcement—Includes information about violent crime offenses (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault), and property crime offenses (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson).

Expanded offense data includes additional data that the Program collects on the eight offenses. Depending on the offense, these details may include the type of weapon and the type and value of items stolen. For the offense of murder, expanded homicide data includes information about murder victims, offenders, and circumstances that are collected on the Supplementary Homicide Report.

Clearance data includes information about crimes “solved” either by arrest or exceptional
means.

Persons arrested—Number of arrests made by law enforcement and the age, gender, and race of arrestees for the 29 offenses (see
Offense Definitions) for which the UCR Program collects arrest data.

Police employees—Information regarding sworn officers and civilian law enforcement personnel.

National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Participation
In 2007, approximately 38 percent of the Nation’s law enforcement agencies participating in the UCR Program submitted their data via the NIBRS, and the crime data collected via the NIBRS comprised approximately 25 percent of the data submitted to the FBI. The jurisdictions that reported crime data to the FBI via the NIBRS covered approximately 25 percent of the Nation’s population.

What do you think?

The E-Government Act of 2002, enacted by Congress, promotes more efficient uses of information technology by the federal government. This Web publication is a result of the UCR Program’s response to that Act. The FBI welcomes your feedback via their short evaluation form. Your comments will help them improve the presentation of future releases of Crime in the United States.

What you won’t find

Rankings by crime levels— Any comparisons of crime among different locales should take into consideration numerous other factors besides the areas’ crime statistics. Therefore, the UCR Program does not provide rankings of localities by crime levels.

Variables Affecting Crime provides more details concerning the proper use of UCR statistics.

Information about unreported crime— Crime in the United States features data collected from law enforcement agencies regarding only those offenses made known to police. However, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), another agency within the Department of Justice, administers the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Using data from the NCVS, the BJS publishes information regarding crimes not reported to the police. For more information about the NCVS and how its data differ from information presented in Crime in the United States, see The Nation’s Two Crime Measures.

County crime totals and “raw data”— Crime in the United States offers crime data from local and county law enforcement agencies in separate tables. These data, which are also presented individually within a county (Crime by County), and other 2007 “raw data” from the UCR Program’s master files will be available sometime after the release of the 2007 publication. For more information, contact the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services.

Special studies— In previous years, Crime in the United States included special studies analyzing UCR data. Such studies are now released separately from Crime in the United States as monographs on www.fbi.gov.

Crime data for 2008—Preliminary statistics for January through June 2008 and for all of 2008 will be available in December 2008 and in June 2009, respectively. Crime in the United States, 2008, will be published on the Web in the fall of 2009.

Suggested reference citation

A suggested citation style follows for data users who need to reference information from this report:

United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (September 2008). Crime in the United States, 2007. Retrieved (insert date), from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/07cius.htm.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation.