Criminal Activity in the United States
Within the United States, classifying crimes is different for individuals working in the criminal justice system versus a sociologist studying crime trends.
As an individual working in the criminal justice system, would likely classify crimes as felonies or misdemeanors.
As a sociologist, crimes are also classified as street-crime or white-collar crime.
Familiarize yourself with more crime vocabulary. Click on the button below to visit the Iowa Department of Public Safety to learn about the varieties of crime that exist:
One way that the United States is able to track crime that occurs in the U.S. is with the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The UCR is the major source of information on crimes reported in the United States. The UCR has been compiled since 1930 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation based on information filed by law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
The UCR program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of police to meet a need for reliable, uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics.
Today, several annual statistical publications are produced from data provided by nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.
The UCR focuses on eight major crimes, called index crimes: murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary (breaking into private property to commit a serious crime), motor vehicle theft, arson, and larceny (theft of property worth $50 or more).
It also contains data on other types of crime. Click on the button below to explore the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports Page:
You can find information from almost any geographic location in the United States. Try to find your county or town and look at the criminal activity. You will probably find that crime (especially murder) is not as bad as you may preceive it to be.
