Table 27 Data Declaration
Percent of Offenses Cleared by Arrest or Exceptional Means, Additional Information About Selected Offenses by Population Group, 2011
The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
General comments
- This table provides offense breakdowns and the percentages of those crimes that were cleared by arrest or exceptional means for the following offenses:
- Forcible rape (by force and assault to rape-attempts)
- Robbery and aggravated assault (weapon used)
- Burglary (forcible entry, unlawful entry, and attempted forcible entry)
- Motor vehicle theft (vehicle type)
- Arson (property type)
- Agencies must report clearances for specific offense breakdowns on either the Return A or the Monthly Return of Arson Offenses Known to Law Enforcement to be included in this table. However, not all agencies submit supplemental data for all offenses reported to the FBI; therefore, clearance data in this table may differ from those in other clearance tables.
- The number of agencies meeting the criteria for inclusion in this table and the 2011 estimated population for those agencies are provided by city population groups, county population groups, and suburban areas. Because not all agencies submit data reports for arson to the FBI, the agency counts and estimated population presented in this table do not represent participation for the reporting of arson.
- Suburban areas include law enforcement agencies in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and county law enforcement agencies that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area.
- Suburban areas exclude all metropolitan agencies associated with a principal city. The agencies associated with suburban areas also appear in other groups within this table.
Methodology
- The data used in creating this table were from all law enforcement agencies submitting at least 6 months of complete offense reports for 2011.
- The FBI bases percent cleared statistics on aggregated offense and clearance totals. The percentage of crimes cleared by arrest is obtained first by dividing the number of offenses cleared by the number of offenses known and then multiplying the resulting figure by 100.
Population groups
The UCR Program uses the following population group designations:
Population Group |
Political Label |
Population Range |
I |
City |
250,000 and more |
II |
City |
100,000 to 249,999 |
III |
City |
50,000 to 99,999 |
IV |
City |
25,000 to 49,999 |
V |
City |
10,000 to 24,999 |
VI1, 2 |
City |
Less than 10,000 |
VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2 |
County |
N/A |
IX (Metropolitan County)2 |
County |
N/A |
1Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.
2Includes state police to which no population is attributed.
Population estimation
The FBI calculated 2011 state growth rates using the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 decennial state/national population figures and 2011 provisional state/national population estimates. The FBI then estimated population figures for city jurisdictions by applying the 2011 state growth rate to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data.