Exposure to crime, even for those who are not direct victims, is associated with elevated levels of stress, depression, and anxiety in both youth and adults and lower test scores for students. Adolescents exposed to gang violence displayed increased anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Teens who are exposed to higher levels of violent crime are more likely to engage in criminal activity themselves.

Metric: Rates of reported violent crime and property crime (per 100,000 people)

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program provides a standard, well-defined measure of crime. Reported crimes are captured for four index violent felonies (murder or nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and four index property felonies (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson).

Validity: The UCR Program statistics are the most widely used way to measure and compare reported crime across jurisdictions. The FBI provides definitions for each of the criminal offenses in the index, and most police departments in the United States report the data on those offenses to the FBI through a standardized reporting system. The purpose of the FBI’s UCR Program is to provide a common language transcending the varying local and state laws. Although there are potential issues with how different departments might classify offenses, the UCR Program is considered the most standardized source.

Availability: The data are available for most jurisdictions across the United States. If a jurisdiction is not included in the UCR Program data, local officials may be able to obtain the relevant and comparable data directly from their law enforcement agencies.

Frequency: Data are reported annually.

Geography: The UCR Program data are available at the agency level and city level and can be aggregated to the county level, dependent on availably of relevant agency data.

Consistency: The FBI advises caution when using UCR Program data to rank or compare locales because many factors could cause the nature and type of crime to vary by place. Data may be accumulated and compiled differently at the local level.

Subgroups: The data include demographic information (age, race, and gender) for those arrested for all crimes in the index and for the victims and offenders of homicides only (not for the other crimes in the index).

Limitations: Reporting is not mandatory, and although most jurisdictions provide data, UCR does not capture the universe of reported index crimes across the United States. UCR data measure crime reported to the police, so unreported crime is not captured. An FBI analysis estimates that up to half of violent crime goes unreported to the local police, and research finds that some neighborhoods are less likely to report violent crime, especially where trust of police is low. As a place-based metric, reported crime is affected by mobility in and out of the jurisdiction. Crime rates are based on the number of incidents per 100,000 residents. If the number of residents increases, the crime rate could go down without any change in the number of reported incidents. Also, crime tends to be concentrated in certain areas. Similarly, if new residents are moving to places where crime rates are already low, the populations and areas experiencing the most crime may also not see any change even if citywide rates decrease. Relatedly, the UCR Program does not provide data on crime at the neighborhood level, so it cannot track changes in crime or compare different places within a jurisdiction.