Primarily in two ways: Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
Under the UCR program, the FBI collects arrest data on certain crimes from law enforcement agencies around the country. UCR also collects other data such as crimes cleared, demographics for people arrested, and characteristics of homicides (such as victim demographics, victim-offender relationships, and weapons used). The FBI annually publishes a report, Crime in the United States, compiling the data nationally and by state, region, county, municipality, tribe, and higher education institution. Connecticut’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection (DESPP) also publishes an annual report using UCR data: Crime in Connecticut. UCR is aimed at providing statistics for law enforcement administration, operation, and management.
The NCVS is an annual survey conducted by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics of about 169,000 people age 12 and older living in U.S. households, with households remaining in the survey for 3.5 years and new households rotating in over time. The survey captures more data than the UCR, such as information on crimes not reported to law enforcement; more details about each incident regarding victims, offenders, and the crime; and information on victims’ experiences with the criminal justice system. The survey attempts to collect information about crime that is not available through the UCR or otherwise.
Because the UCR and NCVS overlap in many ways but differ in others, learning the details about each is important to understanding the data. Read more about the two ways that the federal government measures crime and how they compare and complement each other in BJS’s new publication, The Nation’s Two Crime Measures.
