What is the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program?
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The UCR Program is a voluntary city, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement program that provides a nationwide view of crime based on the submission of statistics by law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

Since 1930, through the UCR Program, the FBI has collected and compiled data to use in law enforcement administration, operation, and management, and to indicate fluctuations in the level of crime in America.

What are Part 1 Crimes?
Which specific crimes are reported to the UCR Program, and why were these crimes identified for reporting?

The UCR Program collects offense information for murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. These are Part I offenses and are serious crimes by nature and/or volume. Not all crimes, such as embezzlement, are readily brought to the attention of the police. Also, some serious crimes, such as kidnapping, occur infrequently. Therefore, the UCR Program limits the reporting of offenses known to the eight selected crime classifications because they are the crimes most likely to be reported and most likely to occur with sufficient frequency to provide an adequate basis for comparison.

Arson was not originally part of the crime reporting process. Arson became the eighth Part I crime as the result of a limited congressional mandate in October 1978. With the passage of the Anti-Arson Act of 1982, Congress permanently designated arson as a reportable offense.

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