An official website of the United States government. Here's how you know
Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock () or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Federal Bureau of Investigation

Table 1 Data Declaration

Download Printable Document

January to June 2015-­2016
Percent Change, by Population Group

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

General comment

This table provides the percent change in offenses known to law enforcement, by population group, for the first 6 months of 2015 and 2016.

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.

Since the implementation of the revised definition of rape in 2013, not all agencies/state UCR programs have had the ability to change their records management systems to accommodate the change. Therefore, this report provides a column for rape (revised definition) and a column for rape (legacy definition). The data shown in the rape (revised definition) column include those from agencies that reported rape under the UCR revised definition for 2015 and 2016 as well as converted data from agencies that reported data for rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object via the NIBRS for both years. The data shown in the rape (legacy definition) column include only those agencies that reported rape under the legacy definition via the Summary Reporting System (SRS) for 2015 and 2016; it does not include any converted NIBRS data.

Methodology

The data used in creating this table were from law enforcement agencies submitting 3 to 6 common months of offense reports for 2015 and 2016. If the FBI determines certain variables have created unusual fluctuations in the data, those data are excluded from the tabulations.

The rape figures for those agencies that changed from reporting rape under the legacy definition in 2015 to the UCR revised definition of rape in 2016 are not included in this table. Because the UCR Program has not received two consecutive years of data for rape (legacy definition) or two consecutive years of data for rape (revised definition), the national UCR Program cannot provide a 2-year rape comparison for these agencies. This includes 115 agencies representing a total population of 1,890,430 inhabitants.

The percent changes shown for the offense of rape (revised definition) are based on data from those agencies that submitted rape data according to the UCR revised definition for both 2015 and 2016 as well as converted data from agencies that reported data for rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object via the NIBRS for both years.

The percent changes shown for the offense of rape (legacy definition) are based only on data from those agencies that submitted rape data according to the legacy definition via the SRS for both years; it does not include converted NIBRS data.

Because rape data reported by all agencies for 2015 and 2016 cannot be aggregated for reasons noted above, the percent changes from one year to the next are calculated with fewer agencies than in recent years. Offenses with fewer counts are often sensitive to minor differences when calculating trends. The following table provides the actual number of reporting agencies and populations covered for each definition of rape. (As previously noted, agencies that submitted data using rape [legacy definition] for 2015 and rape [revised definition] for 2016 are not included in this report.)

Population Group Agencies using revised UCR rape definition Agencies using legacy UCR rape definition
Agency Count Population Agency Count Population
Total all agencies 11,476 241,140,435 1,775 29,089,614
1,000,000 and over 10 25,844,935 0 0
500,000 to 999,999 19 13,834,946 2 1,437,538
250,000 to 499,000 42 14,409,330 4 1,285,156
100,000 to 249,999 197 29,289,294 11 1,640,530
50,000 to 99,999 386 26,998,940 34 2,293,881
25,000 to 49,999 678 23,451,301 75 2,521,861
10,000 to 24,999 1,405 22,532,007 183 2,903,253
Under 10,000 5,714 17,891,895 914 2,864,403
Metropolitan County 1,338 48,872,473 218 10,298,219
Nonmetropolitan County1 1,687 18,015,314 334 3,844,773

1 Includes state police agencies that report aggregately for the entire state.

Population estimation

For the 2015 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 2014 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 2014 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2015 population estimate.

If you have questions about this table

Contact the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division via e-mail at .