Why and how are crimes estimated for publication in Crime in the United States?
Because not all law enforcement agencies provide complete data for a given year, it is sometimes necessary for the UCR Program to estimate crime at the Metropolitan Statistical Area, state, and national levels. For agencies that did not report data, the UCR Program staff assign the same proportional crime volumes based on the crime statistics of similar areas within a state. The UCR Program staff consider the size of an agency, type of jurisdiction, and geographic location in the estimation process. The UCR Program staff use a similar procedure for estimating the number of arrests for the Nation.
