A classroom exercise for teaching the problems of offense classification and tabulation associated with the UCR

We describe an in-class exercise used to demonstrate problems with the classification and recording of offenses in official crime statistics (the Uniform Crime Report or UCR). The exercise was used with criminology undergraduate students; their reaction indicates that it is effective for demonstrating limitations of the UCR. Following official guidelines, students classify and tabulate offenses described in crime scenarios. Their figures are compared with those expected when the official guidelines (the “true” crime figures) are used; factors contributing to discrepancies between the sets of figures are discussed. We provide suggestions for using the technique in different classroom situations.