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Home Crime in the U.S. 2017 Crime in the U.S. 2017 Tables Table 27 Table 27 Data Declaration

Table 27 Data Declaration

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Percent of Offenses Cleared by Arrest or Exceptional Means, Additional Information About Selected Offenses 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. Therefore, the rape data reported by those agencies using the UCR legacy definition are not included in this table.

General comments

  • This table provides offense breakdowns and the percentages of those crimes that were cleared by arrest or exceptional means for the following offenses:
    • Rape (by force and assault to rape-attempts) 
    • Robbery and aggravated assault (weapon used) 
    • Burglary (forcible entry, unlawful entry, and attempted forcible entry) 
    • Motor vehicle theft (vehicle type) 
    • Arson (property type)
  • Agencies must report clearances for specific offense breakdowns on either the Return A or the Monthly Return of Arson Offenses Known to Law Enforcement to be included in this table. However, not all agencies submit these supplemental data to the FBI; therefore, clearance data in this table may differ from those in other clearance tables.
  • The number of agencies meeting the criteria for inclusion in this table and the 2017 estimated population for those agencies are provided by city population groups, county population groups, and suburban areas.
  • 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.

Methodology

  • The data used in creating this table were from all law enforcement agencies submitting at least 6 months of complete offense reports for 2017.
  • The FBI bases percent cleared statistics on aggregated offense and clearance totals. The percentage of crimes cleared by arrest is obtained by dividing the number of offenses cleared by the number of offenses known and then multiplying the resulting figure by 100.
  • The rape figures are based only on those agencies reporting rape using the revised definition. See table below.

Populations used to calculate rape clearances
by Population Group, 2017

 

Agency count and population (based on revised rape data) 

Population Group 

Agency count 

Population 

Total all agencies 

13,973 

266,485,455 

Total Cities 

10,331 

186,505,653 

I (250,000 inhabitants and more) 

73 

55,304,591 

Ia (1,000,000 and over) 

10 

25,129,639 

Ib (500,000 to 999,999) 

22 

15,762,156 

Ic (250,000 to 499,000) 

41 

14,412,796 

II (100,000 to 249,999 inhabitants) 

191 

28,483,245 

III (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants) 

422 

29,554,113 

IV (25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants) 

767 

26,655,066 

V (10,000 to 24,999 inhabitants) 

1,594 

25,444,747 

VI (Less than 10,000 inhabitants)  

7,284 

21,063,891 

IX (Metropolitan County) 

1,613 

58,406,032 

VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)1 

2,029 

21,573,770 

Suburban Area2 

7,563 

111,314,847

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.