Interpreting arrests data
Police enforcement takes many forms, including citations, summonses, warrants, arrests, and more. While national-level data does not yet exist for most of these indicators, detailed arrest data exists through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) persons arrested tables. The UCR is a large and complex data series that compiles all the arrest data voluntarily reported by the country’s 18,000+ police agencies. (Another data collection effort, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), will become the primary reporting system in 2021 and will be included in future iterations of the tool.) On this page, users can interact with data pulled from the UCR to learn more about the wide reach of police enforcement and explore how arrest trends vary by offense type, time, and place.
For more information about how to interpret UCR data see the FAQ.
