Table 16 Data Declaration
Rate: Number of Crimes per 100,000 Inhabitants by Population Group, 2019
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 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 publishable data for 2019.
- The Nonmetropolitan Counties classification includes state police agencies that report aggregately for the entire state.
- Suburban areas include law enforcement agencies in cities with fewer 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
- Rape data reported by agencies using the UCR legacy definition are not included in this table.
- Due to a system upgrade in 2019, the FBI calculates rates for each offense based on the individual offenses and population that were published for each agency in tables 8-11. (Previous to 2019, when agencies were published in tables 8-11, but they had one or two offenses removed from publication due to not meeting UCR publication guidelines, the agency’s data was not used to calculate rates for this table.)
- The FBI derived the offense rates by first dividing the individual offense counts by the individual populations covered by contributing agencies for which 12 months of publishable data were supplied and then multiplying the resulting figure by 100,000.
Populations used to calculate violent crime rates by population group, 2019
See Data Declaration download for Agency/Population Count table.
Population groups
The UCR Program uses the following population group designations:
Population Group |
Political Label |
Population Range |
I |
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 |
V |
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 2019 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 2018 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 2018 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2019 population estimate.