What is the uniform crime report? It’s a collection of different statics on crime that covers the entire year. The goal of the report is to mine the data so that crime trends can be gauged. By doing this, responses in each community and region can be formulated so that growing trends in crime can be countered effectively. First conceived during the Prohibition era of the United States, this measurement of national crime has some pros and cons that must be considered.
The Pros of the Uniform Crime Report
It puts real crime data into a consumable format.
The average person is concerned about what their risks of crime happen to be in their own neighborhood. They want to protect their assets and their loved ones as effectively as possible. The uniform crime report can help people to see where the safest parts of the country happen to be.
It allows people to see the historical perspective of crime.
The trends of crime data can help people to understand what approaches were found to be successful and what trends should just be scrapped or revamped. By seeing what has been successful and what has not been successful, it gives the country a chance to learn from its mistakes.
It lets society see how it has viewed crime over the years.
Murder has been defined in a number of different degrees over the years. So have assaults and virtually all other crime. By seeing how crime has been viewed by society over the years, every community can look at the data to see if trends are continuing, despite the crime law being classified into different definitions.
The Cons of the Uniform Crime Report
It isn’t 100% accurate.
For virtually every crime that is on the books, a good portion of them are never reported to law enforcement officials. This includes violent crime like rape and other sexual assaults. The uniform crime report only contains information about the crimes that are reported to law enforcement officials.
Changes in local laws can cause information spikes.
Laws change every year, so the data that is on the uniform crime report changes every year as well. This means that the data must be extensively mined in order to find trends because the data can be skewed based on each tier of law that is in place across the land.
The data is slow in coming out.
When data is sometimes more than a year old when it is released, it can be difficult for a community to adequately respond to it. Although future responses can be crafted, immediate responses are virtually impossible with the uniform crime report.
The uniform crime report has some specific advantages and some disadvantages to it, depending on how someone wishes to use the data. By evaluating the data with these pros and cons, you’ll be able to see if the UCR has the data you need to examine.
