1 Includes other derivatives such as morphine, heroin, and codeine.Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, annual.

http://WWW.fbi.GOV/ucr/ucr.htm

*Uniform Crime Reports

The FBIs UCR Program, which began in 1929, collectsinformation on the following crimes reported to law enforcementauthorities: homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravatedassault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.Arrests are reported for 21 additional crime categories.The UCR data are compiled from monthly law enforcementreports or individual crime incident records transmitted directlyto the FBI or to centralized state agencies that then report tothe FBI. Each report submitted to the UCR Program is examinedthoroughly for reasonableness, accuracy, and deviationsthat may indicate errors. Large variations in crime levels mayindicate modified records procedures, incomplete reporting, orchanges in a jurisdictions boundaries. To identify any unusualfluctuations in an agencys crime counts, monthly reports arecompared with previous submissions of the agency and withthose for similar agencies.

In 1995, law enforcement agencies active in the UCRProgram represented approximately 251 million United Statesinhabitants 95 percent of the U.S. population.The UCR Program provides crime counts for the Nation asa whole, as well as for regions, states, counties, cities, and towns.This permits studies among neighboring jurisdictions andamong those with similar populations and other common characteristics.UCR findings for each calendar year are published in apreliminary release in the spring, followed by a detailed annualreport, Crime in the United States, issued in the followingcalendar year. In addition to crime counts and trends, this reportincludes data on crimes cleared, persons arrested (age, sex,and race), law enforcement personnel (including the numberof sworn officers killed or assaulted), and the characteristics ofhomicides (including age, sex, and race of victims and offenders,victim-offender relationships, weapons used, and circum-stancessurrounding the homicides). Other special reports arealso available from the UCR Program.*Arrests

The arrest statistics report the number of arrests made by law enforcement agencies in a particular year -- not the number of individuals arrested, nor the number ofcrimes committed. The number of arrests is not equivalent to the number ofpeople arrested because an unknown number of individuals are arrestedmore than once in the year. Nor do arrest statistics represent counts ofcrimes committed by arrested individuals, because a series of crimescommitted by one individual may culminate in a single arrest or a singlecrime may result in the arrest of more than one person. This lattersituation, many arrests resulting from one crime, is relatively common injuvenile law-violating behavior, because juveniles are more likely thanadults to commit crimes in groups. This is the primary reason why arreststatistics should not be used to indicate the relative proportion of crimecommitted by juveniles and adults. Arrest statistics are most appropriatelya measure of flow into the criminal and juvenile justice systems.

Arrest statistics also have limitations in measuring the volume of arrestsfor a particular offense. Under the UCR Program, the FBI requires lawenforcement agencies to classify an arrest by the most serious offensecharged in that arrest. For example, the arrest of a youth charged withaggravated assault and possession of a controlled substance would bereported to the FBI as an arrest for aggravated assault. Therefore, whenarrest statistics show that law enforcement agencies made an estimated220,700 arrests of young people for drug abuse violations in 1997, itmeans that a drug abuse violation was the most serious charge in these220,700 arrests. An unknown number of additional arrests in 1997included a drug charge as a lesser offense.

*Drug abuse violations--State and local offenses relating to the unlawful possession, sale, use, growing, andmanufacturing of narcotic drugs. The following drug categories are specified: Opium or cocaine and their derivatives(morphine, heroin, codeine); marijuana; synthetic narcotics--manufactured narcotics that can cause true addiction(demerol, methadone); and dangerous non-narcotic drugs (barbiturates, benzedrine).

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