the account of a crime committed against them. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports program, which began in 1930, collects information from monthly law enforcement reports or individual crime incident records transmitted directly to the FBI or to centralized State agencies that then report to the FBI. In 1994, law enforcement agencies active in the Uniform Crime Report Program represented approximately 249 million U.S. inhabitants -- 96% of the total population. The Uniform Crime Reports Program provides crime counts for the Nation as a whole, as well as for regions, States, counties, cities, and towns. This permits studies among neighboring jurisdictions and among those with similar populations and other common characteristics. Each program has unique strengths. The Uniform Crime Reports provides a measure of the number of crimes reported to law enforcement agencies throughout the country. The Uniform Crime Report's Supplemental Homicide Reports provide the most reliable, timely data on the extent and nature of homicides in the Nation. The NCVS is the primary source of information on the characteristics of criminal victimization and on the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement authorities. It is difficult to say which report system is the better of the two, they both have strengths and weaknesses. I fee that the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) Program and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) were designed to complement each other. The Uniform Crime Reports Program's primary objective is to provide a reliable set of criminal justice statistics for law enforcement administration, operation, and management, as well as to indicate fluctuations in the level of crime in America. The NCVS was established to obtain and provide previously unavailable information about victims, offenders, and crime (including crime not reported to the police). While the two programs employ different methodologies, they measure a similar subset...
