White-Collar Crime - White-collar Crime Arrests

In 1929 the FBI introduced the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system to collect information about crimes reported to the police. In 1982 a study of the UCR was completed and a recommendation was made to redesign the system to provide more comprehensive and detailed crime statistics. This resulted in a five-year program to update the system to become the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which collects data on each reported crime incident. The system currently reports on cases of homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Some information about offenses, victims, offenders, and reported arrests for 21 additional crime categories is included. The NIBRS system also provides information on 46 different crimes and 11 lesser offenses, including white-collar crimes.

Under the UCR system, white-collar offenses that are measured only include fraud, forgery/counterfeiting, embezzlement, and a category for "all other crimes." The latter category does not differentiate white-collar crimes from other crimes in this category. The only information available for each of the categories is arrest information, which includes the age, sex, and race of the arrestee. Because the NIBRS system is still in transition, with some agencies still using the UCR system, the data about other white-collar crimes available from NIBRS in 1997–1999 are not representative of all agencies in the nation.

According to The Measurement of White-Collar Crime Using Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Data, the rate of arrest for white-collar crimes in 1997–1999 varied by offense. For fraud offenses (reported most often), the arrest rate was 131.5 arrests per 100,000 inhabitants, while embezzlement had the lowest arrest rate, at 6.5 per 100,000 inhabitants.