The UCR Program does not collect or publish any personal information, or PII.

Crime rates are indicators of reported crime activity standardized by population.  They are more refined indicators for comparative purposes than are volume figures. 

A crime rate, defined as the number of offenses per 100,000 population, is derived by first dividing a jurisdiction’s population by 100,000 and then dividing the number of offenses by the resulting figure. 

Example: 

a. Population for Jurisdiction, 75,000

b. Number of known burglaries for Jurisdiction for a year, 215

Divide 75,000 by 100,000 = .75

Divide 215 by .75 = 286.7

The burglary rate is 286.7 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The number .75 can now be divided into the totals of any offense class to produce a crime rate for that offense.  The same procedure may be used to obtain arrest rates per 100,000.

Excel Formula

                         COLUMN B     COLUMN C      COLUMN D

ROW 6               75,000          215                =SUM(C6/B6)*100000

The Rhode Island UCR program is National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) certified; certification was achieved in June 2005 for flat file submission and recertified in August 2021 for XML submission. To ensure the quality and integrity of data collected and submitted to the Rhode Island UCR program and, consequently, the FBI, the Rhode Island UCR program required contributing agencies, to satisfy certification requirements.  Rhode Island has been a NIBRS only state since 2005.

Each local and state law enforcement agency went through a 6-month reporting certification process.  The certification process required each agency to submit 6 consecutive months and ensure system compatibility, system responsiveness, and statistical reasonableness as defined by the FBI NIBRS Certification Requirements.

The data found on Crime in Rhode Island Online represents crime reported to local and state law enforcement agencies and is not an exhaustive report of all crime that occurs. It is important to consider the various factors that lead to crime activity and crime reporting in a community before interpreting the data. Without these considerations the available data can be deceiving. Factors to consider include population size and density, economic conditions, employment rates, prosecutorial, judicial, and correctional policies, administrative and investigative emphases of law enforcement, citizens’ attitudes toward crime and policing, and the effective strength of the police force.

Since crime is a sociological phenomenon influenced by a variety of factors, the Rhode Island State Police discourages ranking locations or making comparisons as a way of measuring law enforcement effectiveness. Some of this data may not be comparable to previous years because of differing levels of participation over time. Ranking locations by crime rate is inherently misleading.