Term
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Definition
| The unlawful, intentional inflicting, or attempted or threatened inflicting, of serious injury upon the person of another. Although aggravated assault and simple assault are standard terms for reporting purposes, most state penal codes use labels like first-degree and second-degree assault to make such distinctions. |
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Term
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Definition
| An unlawful attack by one person upon another. Historically, assault meant only the attempt to inflict injury on another person; a completed act constituted the separate offense of battery. Under modern statistical usage, however, attempted and completed acts are grouped together under the generic term assault. |
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Term
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Definition
| Any willful or malicious burning or attempting to burn, with or without intent to defraud, a dwelling house, public building, motor vehicle or aircraft, personal property of another, and so on. Some instances of arson result from malicious mischief, some instances of arson result from malicious mischief, some involve attempts to claim insurance money, and some are committed in an effort to disguise other crimes, such as murder, burglary, or larceny. |
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Term
| Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) |
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Definition
| A U.S. Department of Justice agency responsible for the collection of criminal justice data, including the annual National Crime Victimization Survey. |
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Term
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Definition
| By the narrowest and oldest definition, the trespassory breaking and entering of the dwelling house of another in the nighttime with the intent to commit a felony. |
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Term
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Definition
| The unlawful entry of a structure to commit a felony on a theft (excludes tents, trailers, and other mobile units used for recreational purposes). For the UCR/NIBRS Program, the crime of burglary can be reported if (1) an unlawful entry of an unlocked structure has occurred (2) a breaking and entering (of a secured structure) has taken place, or (3) a burglary has been attempted. |
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Term
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Definition
| A measure of investigative effectiveness that compares the number of crimes reported or discovered to the number of crimes solved through arrest or other means (such as the death of the suspect). |
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Term
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Definition
| A violation of a criminal statute by a corporate entity or by its executives, employees, or agents acting on behalf of and for the benefit of the corporation, partnership, or other term of business entity. |
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Term
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Definition
| A now defunct but once inclusive measure of the UCR Program's violent and property crime categories, or what are called Part 1 offenses, The Crime Index, long featured in the FBI's publication Crime in the United States was discontinued in 2004. The index had been intended as a tool for geographic (state-to-state) and historical (year-to-year) comparisons via the use of crime rates (the number of crimes per unit of population). However, criticism that the index was misleading arose after researchers found that the largest of the index's crime categories, larceny-theft, carried undue weight and led to an underappreciation of changes in the rates of more violent and serious crimes. |
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Term
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Definition
| A classification of crimes along a particular dimension such as legal categories, offender motivation, victim behavior, or the characteristics of individual offenders. |
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