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Rate: Number of Crimes per 100,000 Inhabitants by Population Group, 2014

The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

Important note about rape data

In 2013, the FBI UCR Program initiated the collection of rape data under a revised definition and removed the term “forcible” from the offense name. The UCR Program now defines rape as follows:

Rape (revised definition):  Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim. (This includes the offenses of rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object as converted from data submitted via the National Incident-Based Reporting System [NIBRS]).

Rape (legacy definition):  The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.

General comments

• This table provides the rate per 100,000 inhabitants and the number of offenses known to law enforcement for violent crimes (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) nationally and by city and county groupings for law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of complete data for 2014. In addition, the table furnishes the number of agencies meeting the criteria for inclusion in this table and provides the estimated population for each population group.

• The Nonmetropolitan Counties classification includes state police agencies that report aggregately for the entire state.

• Suburban areas include law enforcement agencies in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and county law enforcement agencies that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area.

• Suburban areas exclude all metropolitan agencies associated with a principal city. The agencies associated with suburban areas also appear in other groups within this table.

• The UCR Program does not have sufficient data to publish arson offenses in this table. Information about arson can be found in Arson Tables 1 and 2.

Methodology

• The data used in creating this table were from all law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of complete data (except arson) for 2014.

• The FBI derived the offense rates by first dividing the aggregated offense counts by the aggregated populations covered by contributing agencies for which 12 months of complete data were supplied and then multiplying the resulting figure by 100,000.

• The rape rates were calculated using the population of the agencies based on the UCR definition of rape (revised or legacy) they used to submit data. See table below.

¹Includes state police agencies that report aggregately for the entire state.
²Suburban areas include law enforcement agencies in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and county law enforcement agencies that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area. Suburban areas exclude all metropolitan agencies associated with a principal city. The agencies associated with suburban areas also appear in other groups within this table.

Population groups

The UCR Program uses the following population group designations:

¹Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.
²Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

Population estimation

For the 2014 population estimates used in this table, the FBI computed individual rates of growth from one year to the next for every city/town and county using 2010 decennial population counts and 2011 through 2013 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each agency’s rates of growth were averaged; that average was then applied and added to its 2013 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2014 population estimate.