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Home Crime in the U.S. 2017 Crime in the U.S. 2017 Tables Table 16 Table 16 Data Declaration

Table 16 Data Declaration

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Rate: Number of Crimes per 100,000 Inhabitants by Population Group, 2017

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

Important note about rape data

In 2013, the FBI’s UCR Program initiated the collection of rape data under a revised definition within the Summary Based Reporting System. The term “forcible” was removed from the offense name, and the definition was changed to “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.”

In 2016, the FBI Director approved the recommendation to discontinue the reporting of rape data using the UCR legacy definition beginning in 2017.

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 2017. 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 2017.
  • Rape data reported by agencies using the UCR legacy definition are not included in this table.
  • 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 reporting rape using the revised definition of rape. See table below.

Populations used to calculate rape rates  
by Population Group, 2017 

Population Group 

Agency count and population (based on revised rape data) 

Agency count 

Population 

Total all agencies 

14,461 

296,160,174 

Total Cities 

10,555 

203,736,847 

I (250,000 inhabitants and more) 

78 

60,016,400 

Ia (1,000,000 and over) 

11 

27,835,810 

Ib (500,000 to 999,999) 

23 

16,656,794 

Ic (250,000 to 499,000) 

44 

15,523,796 

II (100,000 to 249,999 inhabitants) 

212 

31,496,794 

III (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants) 

477 

33,324,022 

IV (25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants) 

843 

29,319,412 

V (10,000 to 24,999 inhabitants) 

1,738 

27,792,486 

VI (Less than 10,000 inhabitants)  

7,207 

21,787,733 

IX (Metropolitan County) 

1,790 

70,017,265 

VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)1 

2,116 

22,406,062 

Suburban Area2 

8,059 

128,321,946 

1Includes state police agencies that report 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 areas. 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:

Population Group 

Political Label 

Population Range 

City 

250,000 and more 

II 

City 

100,000 to 249,999 

III 

City 

50,000 to 99,999 

IV 

City 

25,000 to 49,999 

City 

10,000 to 24,999 

VI1,2 

City 

Less than 10,000 

VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2 

County 

N/A 

IX (Metropolitan County)2 

County 

N/A 

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

Population estimation

For the 2017 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 2016 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 2016 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2017 population estimate.