Crimes are tracked using the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) from the FBI. The UCR is the most widely cited crime report used by many law enforcement personnel in jurisdictions across the United States. It came about in 1930 when the Department of Justice compiled and published national crime statistics. The UCR compares victim surveys and also reports. Uniform Crime Reports tracks crimes, hate crimes, and Law Enforcement Officers killed and assaulted. Every police department uses this information and other agencies to collect, gather information about crime. The one negative aspect of the UCR is the information that is inputted is not properly reported. Crime statistics are the most unreliable and the most difficult of all social statistics. Some of the reasons the statistics are unreliable and difficult is because behavior may be wrongly labeled, crimes go undetected, crimes are not reported to police or inaccurately reported to the police, and statistics do not include the dark figure of crime. The dark figure of crime is the number of crimes not reported by the police. There are areas where people are afraid to talk to police and are unwilling to report crimes. This is due to gangs, retaliation and fear for their lives. Rape is another crime that does not get reported often. There is an assumption that the person who is raped deserved it or acted a certain way or the way they were dressed. These are only assumptions and all crime should be reported no matter what.
In my experiences I have seen members of my agency who handle the UCR statistics go crazy over improper coding imputed into reports. I never really understood why, however this class, the posts and articles have been much help.