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Home Crime in the U.S. 2017 Crime in the U.S. 2017 Tables Table 30 Table 30 Data Declaration

Table 30 Data Declaration

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Number and Rate of Arrests by Region, 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 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 2017.
  • 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 2017. 
  • 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.
  • The rape figures in this table are aggregate totals of data submitted using both the legacy and revised UCR definitions of rape.

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 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.