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Home Crime in the U.S. 2018 Crime in the U.S. 2018 Tables Table 71 Table 71 Data Declaration

Table 71 Data Declaration

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Full-time Law Enforcement Officers, by Region and Geographic Division by Population Group, Number and Rate per 1,000 Inhabitants, 2018

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

General comments

  • This table provides the number and rate per 1,000 inhabitants of sworn law enforcement officers broken down by region, geographic division, and population group.
  • The totals for full-time law enforcement officers in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan county agencies are combined in this table.
  • 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 information in this table is derived from law enforcement officer counts (as of October 31, 2018) submitted by participating agencies.
  • The UCR Program defines law enforcement officers as individuals who ordinarily carry a firearm and a badge, have full arrest powers, and are paid from governmental funds set aside specifically to pay sworn law enforcement.
  • The FBI derived the rate of full-time law enforcement officers per population group by first dividing the aggregated total of personnel for the group by the aggregated estimated populations covered by the contributing agencies within the group and then multiplying the resulting figure by 1,000.

Regions and geographic divisions

The U.S. Census Bureau established the four regions of the United States along with their nine geographic divisions that are used by the UCR Program to compile the nation’s crime data. The following table lists the 50 states and the District of Columbia arranged according to the regions and geographic 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 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 2018 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 2017 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 2017 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2018 population estimate.