Arrest in the United States, 1980-2009

Septrember 2011:

Arrest in the United States, 1980-2009 NCJ 234319

Introduction
This report presents newly developed national estimates of arrests and arrest rates covering the 30-year period from 1980 to 2009, based on data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR). By reviewing trends over the 30 years, readers can develop a detailed understanding of matters entering the criminal justice system in the U.S. through arrest.

The UCR collects arrest data from participating state and local law enforcement agencies. ese agencies provide monthly counts of their arrests (including citations and summons) for criminal acts within several o ense categories. In Crime in the United States, 2009, the FBI estimated that the state and local law enforcement agencies covered by the UCR made 13,687,000 arrests in 2009. Statistics in this report expand the FBI’s set of published arrest estimates to include estimates of arrests by age group, sex, and race within many o ense categories. These detailed breakdowns of arrests and arrest trends provide a unique understanding of the ow of individuals into the criminal justice system over a long period of time. Within a single o ffense category, arrest trends often differ substantially for males and females, juveniles and adults, and racial groups.

To interpret the arrest statistics presented in the report, readers are encouraged to review the FBI’s counting rules discussed in the Methodology. This report uses arrest rates rather than arrest counts to display 30-year trends, because rates control for changes in the size of the reference population over this time period. In addition, readers should review graph legends before studying the graphs because some arrest rates have been multiplied by a constant to make the trends more visible. In the graph legends throughout this report, American Indian/Alaskan Native is abbreviated as AIAN, and Asian/Pacific Islander is abbreviated as API.

In addition to this report, BJS has developed an online data access tool that enables users to generate graphs and tables of national trends in arrests and arrest rates for a large set of o ffenses and population subgroups. e online tool is available on the BJS website. is tool will enable policymakers, justice system professionals, advocates, the media, researchers, students, and the public to produce the specific information they need with little effort, information that is often not readily available or that cannot be found in any other resource. ..Source.. by Howard N. Snyder, Ph.D., BJS Statistician