The Three Major Crime Reporting Systems

Uniform Crime reports, National Incident Based Reporting System and the National Crime Reporting Survey are all major crime reporting systems here in the U.S. Each crime reporting system has its own advantage and disadvantage towards the criminals and victims as well as the law enforcement involved. Each has a unique history on how it started and when, how it became as popular of a system as it is now and will it keep growing or will it one day start to fade into the background while other reporting systems take its place. Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) include official information about criminal events that has been provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from the law enforcement agencies that the said crime was first reported to. Some of the advantages of UCR programs are that citizens can be informed on the crimes that take place in certain areas we well as the types of crimes. This is a great benefit for any person wanting to know crime rates in their neighborhoods, or future neighborhoods. Mothers can see the crime rate in the neighborhood that their kid’s school is in, or the neighborhoods included in the route their kids walk to and from school every day. Although the down side to this is this program is not always accurate, in that it only shows the crimes that have been reported to law enforcement agencies. Statistics show that sexual assaults are reported more frequently than robberies and breaking and entering. Another disadvantage of the UCR program is how it defines and reports rape cases, only cases of rape that include a man raping a woman are reported, so rape against men or even same sex rape does is not included in the reporting program. Lastly the UCR program warns that it actually only shows the crimes that are reported by the law enforcements themselves. Meaning that everything that happens after the criminal event is out of the police’ hands, it does not get reported for the citizens to see. For example, if a woman