Uniform Crime Reporting and Community Policing - An Historical Perspective

• NCJ Number: 99217
• Author(s): D W Banas; R C Trojanowicz
• Date Published: 1985
• Length: 29 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Charles Stewart Mott Foundation
• Corporate Author: National Neighborhood Foot Patrol Ctr
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services; National Neighborhood Foot Patrol Ctr
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Community Policing Series number 5.

Annotation

After discussing the historical purposes and origins of the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR's), this study examines the relationship of UCR's to innovative community policing modes, with the Flint Neighborhood Foot Patrol experiment being the focus of the discussion.

Abstract

In reviewing the historical background of the UCR's, the study concludes that what they actually measure is not as relevant as the police organizational needs which prompted their creation and sustained their use over 50 years. Historically, the UCR's facilitated the centralization of police discretion within a command structure. UCR's became the basis for organizational judgments and the measurement of line-officer performance. The UCR's and associated measures dictated forms of structural change and technological innovation based on ideological considerations rooted in quantitative measurements. Basing police performance on UCR quantitative crime reporting measures necessarily fosters reactive rather than proactive policing. This encourages police to focus on the symptoms rather than the causes of social disorder. The Flint Foot Patrol experiment (Michigan), for example had proactive policing goals that could not be measured by UCR statistics. The UCR's, although useful as one indicator of community trends, are not a measure of the quality of life that can be fostered by community policing. Sixty-one notes and a 42-item selected bibliography are provided.