Question

1. Define the terms UCR, NIBRS, and NCVS. What is the purpose of each?
2. If you could pick only one measure of crime, which one would you choose? Defend your answer?

Answer 1

Answer 1

UCR

UCR stands for Unified Crime Report. It refers to crimes reported to the police, number of arrests/people arrested.Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is a statistical reporting program run by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division. The UCR Program publishes Crime in the United States, which provides an annual summation of the incidence and rate of reported crimes throughout the United States.

Advantages of UCR

• Can be used to determine trends and patterns in order to make comparisons.
• Used to evaluate how police deal with criminal behavaior.

Disadvantages of UCR

• Hidden figure of crime and hierarchical rule.

NIBRS

National Incident-Based Recording System is full form for NIBRS. It reports details about victims, offenders and the environments in which they interact.National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is an incident-based reporting system that collects detailed data on every single crime occurrence. NIBRS data are replacing the kinds of summary data that have traditionally been provided by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Advantages of NIBRS

• Definitions are more inclusive than UCR, broader range of offenses and collects info on multi-offense incidents.

NCVS

National Crime Victimization Survey is full form of NCVS.It reports context of crime, characteristics of victims, offender info, etc.National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is an annual survey of selected American households conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to determine the extent of criminal victimization—especially unreported victimization—in the United States.

Advantages of NCVS

• Results can be generalized for entire population.
• More accurate picture of crime and estimate of crimes.
• Includes info that is not on UCR.

Disadvantages of NCVS.

Memory errors, Telescoping, Juvenile Victims, Errors of deception and Sampling Errors are few disadvantages.

Answer 2

NIBRS is the best measure of crime. Implemented to improve the overall quality of crime data collected by law enforcement, NIBRS captures details on each single crime incident as well as on separate offenses within the same incident including information on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, and property involved in crimes.NIBRS goes much deeper because of its ability to provide circumstances and context for crimes like location, time of day, and whether the incident was cleared. The FBI has made nationwide implementation of NIBRS a top priority because NIBRS can provide more useful statistics to promote constructive discussion, measured planning, and informed policing. The vision for NIBRS is for it to become the law enforcement community’s standard for quantifying crime, which will help law enforcement and communities around the country use resources more strategically and effectively.