Criminal Databases are You in One?

Criminal Databases Are You in One?

By Joseph Parish

We may kid around that you and I are on some sort of special government list because of our beliefs however have you ever wondered just how close we are in our thoughts? Perhaps we are on certain lists or our names are contained in specific databases some of which we know nothing about.

Today the government has at their disposal two major databases exclusively created to aid law enforcement. The first one is administered and updated by the Federal Bureau of Investigations. It is appropriately identified as the Uniform Crime Report or UCR. The UCR contains official data transferred to and received from various law enforcement agencies across America. Usually this interchange of crime statistics is based upon what is referred to as index crimes such as homicide, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault and similar anti-social behaviors however how do we know that it is not also tracking our activities. On a monthly basis various law enforcement agencies direct their crime numbers to the central database at the FBI facilities and our names could very well be part of these inputs. Results of the FBI’s compilations are published annually and dissemination of the assembled data is readily made available to law enforcement agencies around the nation.

Participation by the various law enforcement bureaus is generally on a voluntary basis therefore no one agency can verify the total accuracy of the conclusive results. Reported data to the UCR is generally indexed as violent or property type crimes in its Part I section while its Part II expands slightly and tracks more specific crimes. 

One of the major complaints lodged against the UCR is that their members feel it does not accurately reflect the actual crime rates since supposedly its inclusions only listing crimes which have been reported to the law enforcement agencies. In addition, it is suppose to only track major crimes and not any minor violations thus they contend it is impossible to link the minor and major crimes together. As an example of this suppose a person is murdered during a carjacking, the reported information would be listed under the category of murder and not the car jacking. What this amounts to is that the total number of criminal acts which occur may not actually be known at all since not all crimes committed come to the attention of the police. In addition, not all crimes are considered to be of sufficient importance to warrant inclusion into the index.

Our second contribution to law enforcement databases is the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data or the NACJD. This organized collection of data was established to facilitate research into the field of criminal justice. It provides a computerized resource of archived data which can effectively be used for training workshops as well as background material.

I mention these two database since it would be good to know that they do in fact exist and as survivalists we must be aware of any type of database or accumulation of data that would perhaps wrongfully label us and our activities.

Copyright @2010 Joseph Parish

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