Comparison Of Primary Crime Data Sources - National Crime Victimization Survey, Uniform Crime System And National Incident-Based Reporting System



Comparison Of Primary Crime Data Sources - National Crime Victimization Survey, Uniform Crime System And National Incident-Based Reporting System

Introduction

There are two primary sources of the crime statistics that are used in the United States. These two primary sources include the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is accumulated on the annual basis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The data of the survey is collected by the sample that is drawn randomly from the population. Whereas, the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is accumulated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI. These reports are accumulated on the relation of crime offences that are further provided to the police and also are placed on the official website of Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The data of the crimes reports that are collected from UCR, National Crime Victimization Survey and from the National Incident Based Reporting System that is also called NIBRS are further utilized by the congress in order to formulate the policies and laws and also for the allocation of criminal justice funding purposes within the United States. The following section aims at discussing the understanding of each of the primary sources and it will also be discussed that how the data is collected regarding the crime and how the reports are generated and what are the differences among these primary sources.

Discussion

The US department of justice manages and directs two statistical programs UCR and NCVS. These programs develop the important information regarding the problems of the crime in the United States. These two programs are conducted for different reason and use different types of methodologies for collecting the data of different types of crimes.

Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)

The crime reporting source, Uniform Crime Reports started its program in the year 1929. This program collects the information regarding the crimes that are associated with the law enforcement authorities and the police of the nation. In this program, the collection of federal crimes is not involved. The involvement in the UCR reporting program is based on the voluntary system and it is not necessary that all the agencies must participate. Under the UCR reporting program, the crimes are divided into two categories. The first category is the index crimes and the second category is offenses. The following is the list of crimes that are reported by the UCR.

Murder

Aggravated assault

Forced rape

Motor vehicle theft

Burglary

Robbery

Larceny theft

Arson

National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

The National Incident-Based Reporting System was also formulated by the FBI in the year 1982 in order to make better the statistical reporting systems and also to make better the abilities of the law enforcement bodies. This program was designed to obtain the more detail about the crime statistics. There is not any system of the hierarchy rule in the NIBRS. The main features of NIBRS are the expanded crime offense categories, the reporting system based on the incident ...