In 2015, 6,648 law enforcement agencies, representing coverage of more than 96 million U.S. inhabitants, reported 4,902,177 incidents that involved 5,668,103 criminal offenses, 5,979,330 victims, and 4,607,928 known offenders, according to the FBI.
The FBI released details on more than 5.6 million criminal offenses reported via the National Incident-Based Reporting System in 2015. The Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s latest report provides a diverse range of information about victims, known offenders, and relationships for 23 offense categories comprised of 49 offenses.
It also presents arrest data for those offense categories plus 10 more offenses for which only arrest data are collected.
Overview of NIBRS 2015
• Agencies reported 3,081,609 arrestees, which includes all persons arrested.
• Of the reported offenses, 62.9 percent involved crimes against property, 23.2 percent involved crimes against persons, and 14.0 percent included crimes against society (e.g., gambling and prostitution). (Due to rounding, percentage breakdowns may not add to 100.0 percent.)
Victims
NIBRS victim types, collected for all reported offenses, may be an individual, a business, an institution, or society as a whole.
• Of the 4,158,264 individual victims reported in 2015, 23.8 percent were between 21 and 30 years of age.
• A little more than half (50.9 percent) were female, 48.3 percent were male, and gender was unknown for 0.8 percent.
• The majority of victims (72.0 percent) were White, 20.8 percent were Black or African American, 1.4 percent were Asian, 0.6 percent were American Indian or Alaska Native, and less than 0.1 percent were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. Race was unknown for 5.2 percent of victims.
Known Offenders
In 2015, there were 4,607,928 known offenders, meaning that some aspect of the suspect—such as age, gender, or race—was identified and reported.
• Of these offenders, more than 44.0 percent (44.4) were between 16 and 30 years of age.
• By gender, most offenders (63.3 percent) were male, and 25.7 percent were female; gender was unknown for 11.0 percent.
• By race, more than half (56.9 percent) of known offenders were White, 27.3 percent were Black or African American, and 1.7 percent were of other races. The race was unknown for 14.1 percent of reported known offenders.
Victim-to-Offender Relationships
Concerning the relationship of victims to known offenders, there were 1,322,282 victims of crimes against persons (e.g., murders, sex offenses, assault offenses) and robbery offenses from the crimes against property category. The majority of these victims knew their offenders (or at least one offender where more than one was present).
• More than half (52.3 percent) of the victims knew their offenders (or at least one offender where more than one was present) but did not have a familial relationship to them.
• Nearly one quarter (24.8 percent) of the victims were related to their offenders (or at least one offender where more than one was present).
Arrestees
Law enforcement agencies submitted data to the UCR Program through incident reports and arrest reports for 3,081,609 arrestees.
• Of these arrestees, 18.4 percent were 21 to 25 years of age.
• By gender, 71.7 percent were male, and 28.3 percent were female.
• By race, most (71.6 percent) arrestees were White, 24.4 percent were Black or African American, and 2.5 percent were of other races. The race was unknown for 1.6 percent of arrestees.