History

Development of the nationwide summary Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program began seventy years ago. In 1930, crime counts were first requested from local police departments, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation designated by Congress to collect, compile, and analyze these statistics. The Committee on Uniform Crime Records of the International Association of Chiefs of Police played a primary role in the origin and development of the UCR Program and, to this day, serves in a strong advisory capacity. The National Sheriff’s Association (NSA) in 1966, established a Committee on Uniform Crime Reporting to serve in an advisory capacity to the NSA membership and the national Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Today, this Committee and similar committees within the state law enforcement associations are active in promoting interest in the UCR Program. Standardized offense classifications and scoring procedures to insure uniformity and consistency of data were the keynote of the reports. All of the Uniform Crime Reports were designed to be a by-product of information that a law enforcement agency should routinely compile for its own efficient administration and performance. The underlying philosophy and focus is and always has been oriented toward police statistics for use by law enforcement agencies, but the unique nature of the program makes the data invaluable for use by elected officials and the American public.

The FBI has actively assisted individual states in the development of statewide programs of police statistics compatible with the national system. These state statistical programs provide the advantage of increased coverage of law enforcement agencies due to mandatory reporting requirements. State systems also provide direct and frequent service to law enforcement agencies in assuring completeness and quality of information provided by them. Through coordination by the state collection agency, the data is available for use by the state, and the collection and reporting machinery for the national program is substantially streamlined.

Prior to June 30, 1974, no mandatory uniform crime reporting law existed in Virginia, and of the 288 agencies in the Commonwealth, 162 or 56% were voluntarily reporting directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Effective law enforcement requires the coordinated action of all law enforcement agencies within and among political subdivisions. Special attention must often be devoted to a selective and concentrated effort both area wide as well as in terms of a specific pattern and type of criminal behavior. Selective and coordinated enforcement becomes possible only when the type and volume of crime can be analyzed on a basis of accurate information, statistically developed and coordinated.

The need for statistical information on the number of offenses and offenders was long recognized in the state. The system developed in Virginia gave vital information that assisted law enforcement agencies throughout the state by furnishing information for management decisions and planning programs. Virginia has now converted to a more extensive data collection system. This new system is discussed on the following page.

A statewide UCR program informs the Governor, Legislature, local and state law enforcement agencies, other governmental officials, and the public as to the nature of crime problems in Virginia, their magnitude, and their trend over a period of time. Local and state officials are able to assess the direction and impact of crime through the collection of timely and reliable statistical information.

UCR System Objectives

The fundamental objectives of the Virginia Uniform Crime Reporting Program are:

1. (1) To inform the Governor, Legislature, and other governmental officials, and the public as to the nature of the crime problem in Virginia—its magnitude and its trend.
2. (2) To provide law enforcement administrators with criminal statistics for administrative and operational use.
3. (3) To determine who commits crimes by age, sex, race, and other attributes in order to find the proper focus for crime prevention and enforcement.
4. (4) To provide base data and statistics to measure the workload and effectiveness of Virginia’s criminal justice system.
5. (5) To provide base data and statistics to measure the effects of prevention and deterrence programs.
6. (6) To provide base data and statistics for research to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and performance of criminal justice agencies.
7. (7) To provide base data to assist in the assessment of social and other causes for the development of theories of criminal behavior.

The Incident Based Reporting System

Virginia is now publishing crime data in a different format. This new reporting system is the Incident Based Reporting System. The Incident Based Reporting (IBR) system was designed to meet law enforcement needs well into the new millennium. The following information is furnished to provide an overall description of IBR.

During the preliminary development of IBR by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, advice was solicited from the National Association of State UCR programs, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association, the National Alliance of State Drug Enforcement Agencies and other federal, state and local criminal justice agencies.

The guidelines and specification developed were provided to South Carolina for testing in a pilot program in 1987. As a result of the testing, further refinements were made. In 1988, a national conference was held to present these guidelines and obtain feedback from representatives of law enforcement agencies in attendance. While the consensus was that the Federal Bureau of Investigation should proceed with efforts to implement this system nationally, additional suggestions concerning this program were submitted.

Virginia formed a State UCR Committee in 1986 to follow the developments of the IBR and to evaluate its impact on our state. This committee was composed of representatives from the Virginia State Sheriffs' Association, the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, the Department of Criminal Justice Services, and the Department of State Police. The State UCR Committee created the UCR Forms Subcommittee, which included representatives from police and sheriffs' agencies, the State Police, and the Department of Criminal Justice Services. This subcommittee developed, tested and subsequently recommended a standard Incident Based Reporting form for use in Virginia. The Forms Subcommittee recommended this form be used at the option of the reporting agencies. However, agencies may use their own form to report the required data to the central repository. It is important, at this point, to recognize that this form is used to collect the various data concerning criminal activity. Because of the numerous data elements collected, law enforcement agencies report this data to the central repository via an automated system.

The UCR Committee recommended that the Superintendent of the Department of State Police adopt the minimum, mandatory data standards recommended by FBI/UCR and proceed with the implementation of Incident Based Reporting in Virginia. In addition, the committee recommended that the data be collected which would relate the offender to the offense, the type of property security/alarm system used, and the method/direction used by the offender to flee the scene. Additional data is collected on Officer Assaulted/Killed Reports relating to the types of activities and assignments the officer was performing at the time of the offense.

Some of the major benefits derived from the IBR system are greater specificity in reporting; more correlation between offenses, property, victims, offenders, and arrestees; expanded victim/offender relationships; distinction between attempted and completed crimes; and increased reporting of various circumstances relative to specific crimes.

The IBR system requires that extensive data be reported for each crime occurring during a particular incident. Under the old summary system, only limited data concerning the most serious crime occurring during a particular incident was reported.

Information relating to two different levels of offenses are collected by the IBR system. The most serious offenses are designated as Group "A" offenses; the less serious offenses are designated as Group "B" offenses. Group "A" offenses consist of 22 categories of crimes involving 46 different offenses; a maximum of 10 offenses per incident may be reported. Agencies are required to report 75 data elements for each Group "A" offense. Group "B" offenses, consisting of 11 crimes, only require reporting arrest data and the identification of the case and reporting agency.

The new offense categories along with their definitions are provided on page six.

Crime Factors

Crime trends vary from place to place; thus, a review of the statistics and comparison of data should be done with caution. While the causes and origins of crime have been the subject of investigation by many disciplines, Crime in Virginia restricts itself to population size alone to establish a crime rate.

Some factors believed to affect the type and volume of crime in various places are:

1. 1. Population size, density and degree of urbanization;
2. 2. Population variations in composition and stability;
3. 3. Economic conditions and employment availability;
4. 4. Mores, cultural conditions, education, and religious characteristics;
5. 5. Family cohesiveness;
6. 6. Climate, including seasonal weather conditions;
7. 7. Effective strength of the police force;
8. 8. Standards governing appointments to the police force;
9. 9. Attitudes and policies of the courts, prosecutors and corrections;
10. 10. Citizen attitudes toward crime and police;
11. 11. The administrative and investigative efficiency of police agencies and the organization and cooperation of adjoining and overlapping police jurisdiction;
12. 12. Crime reporting practices of citizens.