Table 19 Data Declaration
Number and Rate of Arrests by Region, 2016
The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
Important note about rape data
In 2013, the 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.)
Rape (legacy definition): The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.
The rape figures in this table are aggregate totals of the data submitted based on both the legacy and revised UCR definitions.
General comments
- This table provides the number of persons arrested and the arrest rate per 100,000 inhabitants for the four regions of the United States, and also for the nation, in 2016.
- These data represent the number of persons arrested; however, some persons may be arrested more than once during a year. Therefore, the statistics in this table could, in some cases, represent multiple arrests of the same person.
Methodology
- The data used in creating this table were from all law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of arrest data for 2016.
- The FBI derived the arrest rates by first dividing the total number of arrests by the aggregated populations covered by contributing agencies and then multiplying the resulting figure by 100,000.
Regions and divisions
The U.S. Census Bureau has established the four regions of the United States along with their nine geographic divisions which are used by the UCR Program when compiling the Nation’s crime data. The following table lists the 50 states and the District of Columbia arranged according to the regions and divisions of the United States.
NORTHEASTERN STATES
New England
Connecticut
Maine
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Rhode Island
Vermont
Middle Atlantic
New Jersey
New York
Pennsylvania
MIDWESTERN STATES
East North Central
Illinois
Indiana
Michigan
Ohio
Wisconsin
West North Central
Iowa
Kansas
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
SOUTHERN STATES
South Atlantic
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Maryland
North Carolina
South Carolina
Virginia
West Virginia
East South Central
Alabama
Kentucky
Mississippi
Tennessee
West South Central
Arkansas
Louisiana
Oklahoma
Texas
WESTERN STATES
Mountain
Arizona
Colorado
Idaho
Montana
Nevada
New Mexico
Utah
Wyoming
Pacific
Alaska
California
Hawaii
Oregon
Washington
Population estimation
For the 2016 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 2015 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 2015 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2016 population estimate.