History and Nature of Crime - Essay Example

This leads to the inconsistency in reporting between jurisdiction, region and states. Klaus (1981, p 68) notes that the UCR only reports the crimes reported to the police. One can clearly observe whether crime rates are going up or decreasing with the use of UCR. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is the leading source of information on criminal victimization on the number and types of the offense not reported to police. The NCVS objectives are to get comprehensive information about the victims, punishment of crime, determine the number of unreported crimes to the police.

It provides unvarying trial of selected crimes and allows comparison over time and residents types. The NCVS was implemented to supplement the UCR. Schmalleger (2011, p 150) says that the main reporting programs in the U.S are; National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), Uniform Crime reports (UCR), and the National Crime Reporting Survey (NCRS). Each crime reporting program has its own pros and cons towards the criminals and victims as well as the law enforcement present. UCR usually has detailed administrative information about criminal deeds that have been forwarded to the (FBI) from the law enforcement agencies where the crime was first reported to.

Some of the pros of UCR programs are that people can be up to date on the crimes that take place in certain areas as well as, the types of crimes. The disadvantage is that the program only shows the offences that have been recorded by the law enforcement authorities leaving out the unreported. National Incident Based Reporting system (NIBRS) is an incident-based reporting method used in the U.S, to report crimes. Local and federal agencies create NIBRS information from their report management systems when an incident comes to their attention (Bottomley & Coleman, 1981).

The data taken includes the nature of offence, characteristic off the victim and the lawbreaker