Dr. Troy Payne, Justice faculty, presented information on the national Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program to the meeting of the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission and the Anchorage Community Police Relations Task Force in October.Dr. Payne discussed the origins of the program, its goals, how data is collected and presented, and limitations in the data when used for comparison and analysis.
The UCR program collects crime information from law enforcement agencies nationwide. Data are recorded for eight serious crimes: four violent crimes — murder and nonnegligent manslaughter (homicide), forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and four property crimes — burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Sicne 1982 the Criminal Records and Identification Bureau (CRIB) within the Alaska Department of Public Safety has administered the UCR program for Alaska.
