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Home Crime in the U.S. 2017 Crime in the U.S. 2017 Tables Table 55 Table 55 Data Declaration

Table 55 Data Declaration

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Arrests, Metropolitan Counties, by Race and Ethnicity, 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 in metropolitan counties in 2017 broken down by race and ethnicity of the arrestee. In addition, the table shows the percent distribution of arrests by race and ethnicity for each offense. The table also furnishes a breakdown of these data by juveniles (persons under age 18) and adults.
  • The totals provided in this table reflect only those persons arrested by law enforcement agencies that provided race information to the UCR Program; therefore, the totals may not match those shown in other arrest tables for metropolitan counties.
  • The Metropolitan Counties classification encompasses jurisdictions covered by noncity law enforcement agencies located within currently designated Metropolitan Statistical Areas. (See Area Definitions.)
  • 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 metropolitan county law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of arrest data, including race information, for 2017.
  • The rape figures in this table are aggregate totals of data submitted using both the legacy and revised UCR definitions of rape.

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.