MODULE 1: SEX OFFENSES, OFFENDERS AND VICTIMS
Uniform Crime Reports
The topic that we're going to cover is sexual offenses, offenders, and victims. The main source of official data is what is called the Uniform Crime Reports. This is collected by agencies around the country-- law enforcement agencies-- and sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. These
Uniform Crime Reports represent almost 98% of the total US population that live in metropolitan areas, and roughly 90% of the rural population.
Uniform Crime Reports are comprised of what's called part one and part two crimes. Part one index crimes are represented by four property crimes and four personal crimes. The four personal crimes are murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The four property crimes are burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Arson was not added to the index crime list and the Uniform Crime Reports until 1979, though.
So why do Uniform Crime Reports have these index crimes? And why do they use these crimes and consider these as the index crimes? There are several reasons. One of the main reasons is that these crimes are the most likely crimes to be reported to the police.
The second reason is that, for the most part, police investigations can easily establish whether a crime has occurred. These crimes also occur in all geographical areas. They occur in urban areas, rural areas, metropolitan areas, and fringe metropolitan regions as well. And finally, they are serious by nature and or volume. Or in other words, they are serious crimes that occur frequently enough in order to be considered index crimes.
For part two of the Uniform Crime Reports is a big laundry list of more or less serious types of offenses compared to the part one index crimes. You are not responsible for knowing all of these, but I provided examples for you here, such as simple assault, embezzlement, vandalism, prostitution, sex offenses other than rape-- because remember rape is considered a part one index crime-- gambling, driving under the influence, liquor law violations, and so forth.
What is included in the UCR is what are called crimes known to the police, or crimes cleared by the police. There are four main methods for crimes to become known to the police. The first method is victim reports. The second is witness reports. The third is crimes detected by the police. And then, of course, arrests.
It is important to know that crimes detected by the police account for the least amount of known crime, which may come as a surprise. But the reality of it is most of the crimes that become known to the police are reported to them by victims, which is someone calls law enforcement and dials
911, or through a witness report, a bystander report. Someone sees a crime occur and reports this.
So it's either a witness reports the crime, or the victim themselves report a crime to the police. Very few crimes are actually caught in the act by law enforcement. Then, of course, arrests account for the majority of the crime known to the police. Your main source of official data is arrest data.

The level of aggregation of Uniform Crime Reports. It's important to remember that the agency is the lowest level aggregation. This means that publicly available statistics on the UCR are only provided at the agency level, so you cannot find out exactly offender a committed this one specific crime, because it's reported in the aggregate of counts at the agency level. But the FBI, when it publishes the Uniform Crime Reports, also reports crime data for varying types of aggregations, including crime rates in cities, counties, states, metro areas, regions of the United States, and overall crime rate for the United States.
There are a number of limitations with the Uniform Crime Reports. The first of these is that characteristics of victims are not reported. So information such as victim age, or race, or gender are not reported in these statistics.
Second is the hierarchy rule. This is a rule that indicates only the most serious crime in a, let's say, crime spree is counted in the statistics. For instance, if an offender robs the liquor store, steals a motor vehicle as a getaway vehicle, and then, during a high-speed chase with a law enforcement officer, shoots and kills a law enforcement officer, only the murder would be counted-- not the robbery or motor vehicle theft.
Third is the reactive mobilization process. This process is a function of a law enforcement, or by and large reliant on witnesses and victims to report crime, and then they react, mobilize their efforts, and go out and catch the criminals.
Fourth, the probability of reporting varies with the type of crime. For instance, sexual assault, specifically rape, is under-reported. There are a number of reasons why people would not report this type of offense to law enforcement, such as fear of retaliation.
Comparatively, motor vehicle theft has a very high probability of getting reported. If you wake up, walk outside, and your car is missing, the first person you're going to call is likely to be law enforcement, because you want your valuable property back.
Fifth, there can also be organizational pressure to get the crime rate up or down. In the sense, if an agency needs resources, they may start actively enforcing detective work to find burglaries, so the burglary rate could go up, not because there are more burglars committing crime, but because the agency is actively investigating these crimes. It is a priority for the agency.
Six, crackdowns. Let's say there's a crackdown on DUI's. When they create new DUI checkpoints in certain areas of the city, thus the DUI's are going to increase, because they're going to increase the detection and enforcement of DUI. Not necessarily that any given day, there are more offenders on the road that are driving under the influence. It's just that now, because they focused on this, and there's a crackdown, and a checkpoint, this results in higher crime rates for DUI.

Lastly, creation of new units. For instance, let's say gangs are a problem in the area, and the local law enforcement agency creates a new gang unit. Having the special unit will also increase the likelihood of detecting these types of offenses. Hence the gang crime could go up because of this new unit, not because there's more gang crime being committed.