Table 25, Data Declaration

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Percent of Offenses Cleared by Arrest or Exceptional Means
by Population Group, 2006

The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

General comments

This table provides the number of offenses known to law enforcement and the percentage of those offenses that were cleared by arrest or exceptional means.
This table furnishes national clearance data and clearances broken down by six city population groups, two county population groups, and suburban area.
This table lists the number of agencies and the 2006 estimated population in each city grouping, county grouping, and suburban area.
Not all agencies submit reports for arson to the FBI. As a result, the number of reports the FBI uses to compute the percent of offenses cleared for arson is less than the number it uses to compute the percent of offenses cleared for all other offenses.
Suburban area includes law enforcement agencies in cities with less than 50,000 inhabitants and county law enforcement agencies that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Suburban area excludes 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 2006.
The FBI computes clearance percentages using aggregated offense and clearance totals. It should be noted that some clearances an agency records during the calendar year may pertain to offenses that occurred in previous years.

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
VI	City¹	Less than 10,000
VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)	County²	N/A
IX (Metropolitan County)	County²	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 2006 state growth rates using revised 2005 state/national population estimates and 2006 provisional state/national population estimates provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. The FBI then estimated population figures for city and county jurisdictions by applying the 2006 state growth rate to the updated 2005 U.S. Census Bureau data.

If you have questions about this table

Contact the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division via e-mail at cjis_comm@leo.gov or by telephone at (304) 625-4995.