Pennsylvania’s Uniform Criminal Reporting System offers interested parties annual and monthly reports on criminal activity in the state of Pennsylvania. The yearly data is available in the form of statistics that date back from 1999 and the newest statistic report is the one for the year 2010. There are also executive reports offered in parallel (PDF files). Monthly summary arrest reports are also to be found at the following address: http://ucr.psp.state.pa.us/UCR/Reporting/Annual/AnnualSumArrestUI.asp. These reports date back from 2002, and the most recent arrest report is the one from 2012. Arrest, arson, homicide, offender, offense, property and victim reports are all made available to visitors. The search criteria they can use are self explanatory and highly useful.
Plus, Pennsylvania also has a special Commission on Crime and Delinquency that has contributed to the creation of the PACrimeStats.Info website. This website enables direct access to criminal data pertaining to adult and juvenile criminal justice agencies in Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency’s Statistical Analysis Center is therefore part of an important network made of similar centers sustained by the Justice Research and Statistics Association. This is a national nonprofit organization of Statistical Analysis Center directors, researchers and practitioners who are part of government or criminal justice organizations. PACrimeStats.Info is able to provide interested people state and county justice statistics, but also data trends and evaluations. The statistics here can therefore provide information such as crime in certain communities, the exact number of official arrests, the main types of offenses and the number of people who have been incarcerated or paroled. The information is 100 percent available to the public for free. One should expect to find data belonging to the state Department of Corrections, the Commission on Sentencing, the Board of Probation and Parole State Police, the Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission or the Pennsylvania Justice Network.
According to the Crime Justice Trend Report, during 2010 the number of reported offenses was 931,000 in Pennsylvania, recording a 2.5 percent decrease from 2009. In other words, for every 100,000 Pennsylvanian citizens during 2010, there were approximately 7,300 offenses reported. These offenses refer to Part I and Part II offenses. Part I offenses include murder, non-negligent manslaughter, negligent manslaughter, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny, forcible rape, burglary, car theft and arson. Part II offenses refer to all criminal offenses that are not included in Part I: other assaults, forgery and counterfeiting, vandalism, fraud, prostitution, drug abuse violations and embezzlement.
In 2010, for every 100,000 Pennsylvanian residents, 3,600 were arrested. Part II arrests were almost five times the size of Part I arrests (3,000 versus 660). Nevertheless, both parts recorded a decrease from 2009. In 2010, 320,000 Crime Index offenses (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, robbery, forcible rape, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, larceny-theft and arson) were confirmed by Pennsylvania police. Two percent of these crimes were unfounded: 12 for arson and 1 percent unfounded for assault with knife. Also, Crime Index offenses decreased by more than 1 percent as compared to 2009.
More data can be found concerning crime in Pennsylvania by checking out the rest of the reports offered by the Uniform Crime Reporting System:
- Hate Crime Data
- Violent Crime
- Property Crime
- Murder
- Forcible Rape
- Robbery
- Aggravated Assault
- Persons Charged
- And 13 more