Index crimes in 1990 were taking our nation by storm. By far the most widely found index crime was aggravated assault. The UCR shows that for aggravated assault in the U. S. in 1990 there was over 751, 407 cases of aggravated assault reported, but there were also more that the UCR didn’t pick (UCR, 23, 1990) up. On the other hand the NCVS in 1990 reported that there was nearly half more then that of the UCR, 901, 039 were in fact accounted for according to the NCVS (NCVS, 1, 1990).
The NCVS was designed with four primary objectives: (1) to develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of crime, (2) to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to the police, (3) to provide uniform measures of selected types of crimes, and (4) to permit comparisons over time and types of areas. The survey categorizes crimes as ‘personal’ or ‘property.’ Personal crimes cover rape and sexual attack, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and purse-snatching / pocket -picking, while property crimes cover burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. The data from the NCVS survey are particularly useful for calculating crime rates, both aggregated and disaggregated, and for determining changes in crime rates from year to year. The Uniform Crime Reporting Program formulated the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). NIBRS presents comprehensive, detailed information about crime incidents to law enforcement, researchers, governmental planners, students of crime, and the general public.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division conducted the pilot demonstration of this program in 1987. Since then, implementation of NIBRS has been commensurate with the resources, abilities, and limitations of the contributing law enforcement agencies. Although participation grows steadily, data is still not pervasive enough to make broad generalizations about crime in the United States. Reason being for this huge difference in statistics is that the NCVS is compiled primarily of reports that are taken from households anonymously and show not only reported crimes, but also unreported crimes as well. As for the UCR, this FBI report only goes but the numbers sent to them by local and state police departments and does not include those statistics of unreported crimes. It is primarily used to show detail of crimes but not emphasis on those crimes not reported.
Regardless of which reports numbers are accurate or not, point being is just 1 crime is one too many, and the United States along with it’s local and state police departments need to sit down and re evaluate there entire war on crime to decrease these numbers dramatically.