America's Critical Leadership Shortfalls

The FBI collects crime statistics data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The data are collected via the Summary Reporting System (SRS). For agencies reporting via the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the submissions are converted to SRS data to be consistent for this presentation.

Violent Crime includes the offenses of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape (revised definition), robbery, and aggravated assault. Property crime includes burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. The UCR Program does not have sufficient data to estimate arson. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is migrating its data releases from static web publications hosted on www.fbi.gov to more dynamic, multi-year displays of data on the Crime Data Explorer (CDE).

Just as the data in the tables of the annual publications sometimes differ from those available in the master files for the same year, the data in the publication tables may also differ from those released on the Explorer Pages of the CDE. These variations are due to the difference in methodologies between the publication tables and data displayed on the CDE.

Historically, the agency, state, regional, and national data on Crime in the United States, Hate Crime Statistics, and Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted must pass internal data quality reviews before publication. According to the methodology, data that do not meet established criteria are not included in the publication tables. Therefore, individuals who typically use data from tables in Crime in the United States and other UCR web publications on www.fbi.gov will continue to have access to that format via the downloadable publication tables for 2020 and prior years.

As with all the data files released for 1960 through 2020, the data displayed on the CDE include all reported data from agencies and entities aggregated from the agency data, such as states. According to the methodology of typical open data websites, all reported data remain in the file. Individuals who typically work with data files, such as the Master Files, can also access the CDE releases of data from 2020 and earlier for data based on the same quality methodology.

Starting with the release of 2021 data in the calendar year 2022, the UCR Program will be consolidating its data quality review and management practices, reducing or eliminating potential differences between the two presentations.

Because not all law enforcement agencies provide data for complete reporting periods, the FBI includes estimated crime numbers in these presentations. For agencies supplying 3 to 11 months of data, the national UCR Program estimates the missing data by following a standard estimation procedure using the data provided. For agencies that supply less than three months of data, the FBI computes estimates by using the known crime figures of similar areas within a state and assigning the same proportion of crime volumes to nonreporting and partially reporting agencies. The estimation process considers the following:
Population size covered by the agency
Type of jurisdiction, e.g., police department versus sheriff’s office
Geographic location

The data created in this chart were from all law enforcement agencies in the UCR Program (including those submitting less than 12 months of data). The FBI derives state totals by estimating for nonreporting and partially reporting agencies within each state. The UCR Program aggregates a state total using the state’s agency estimates.