NICAR data update — Uplink Archive

NICAR's Data Library has released updates to FBI Uniform Crime Reports (1980, 1990, 1993-97) containing detailed crime statistics across six databases with information on crime types, offender/victim demographics, and circumstances. The data offers valuable investigative resources but has limitations including self-reporting vulnerabilities and potential inconsistencies across jurisdictions.

NICAR data update

Updates of the following data set are now available through NICAR's Data Library:

FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (1980, 1990, 1993-97) contain detailed crime data gathered by the FBI from law enforcement agencies across the country. UCR comes in six tables:

The Return A database gives the number of crimes in 27 categories, including murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary and larceny. Crimes are reported by month and broken down into actual offenses, offenses cleared by arrest and clearances under 18. Supplement to Return A provides greater detail on property crimes. Specific types of crimes (pocket picking, gas station robbery) are given, along with amounts stolen and recovered. The Age, Sex and Race database provides male and female totals for various crimes. Race is given for juveniles and adults. The crimes are more specific, including drug offenses, gambling, DUIs, runaways and others. The Supplemental Homicide Report. For each homicide, the data includes age, sex and race of offenders and victims, as well as their relationship and the circumstances of the crime. It also includes justifiable homicides by police and citizens. Arson is set up like the Return A and Return A Supplement databases. Information includes fires in uninhabited structures and property damage estimates. The Police database provides information about assaults and murders of police officers.

Strengths: FBI Uniform Crime Reports are the only standardized source of detailed, agency-by-agency crime statistics for the whole United States. The reports don't identify criminals or victims, but they do provide interesting information about them, including age, sex, race, and sometimes crime circumstances. Do the numbers for your area look suspicious? Interesting stories have been written about discrepancies between what really happens and what gets reported to the FBI. (See "Counting Crime Right?" story, page 5).

Weaknesses: All UCR data is self-reported; if a law-enforcement agency wants to fudge the numbers, it's easy to do. The FBI has integrity checks in place, but it mostly takes agencies at their word. Even the checks can cause problems: If the FBI deems an agency's (or entire state's) reports unreliable, it may delete them without telling anybody. Because different jurisdictions have different classifications for some crimes, these crimes are sometimes left out of the database without notation (i.e. Minnesota was listed as having no rapes for some years). So it is important to check values against local numbers.

Also coming this summer, HAZMAT (hazardous material spills), OSCAR (nursing home inspections), Federal Procurements (federal contracts), USDA (meat-packing plant inspections) and more.

To order, call NICAR at (573) 884-7332.