The Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting (I-UCR) Program was developed in 1971 and
implemented on January 1, 1972. The Illinois State University Police have always participated in the collection of crime data for submission to the Illinois State Police. Crime data is submitted on a monthly basis. The Illinois State Police was given the responsibility to act as
the central repository for crime statistics. Reporting crime statistics is mandated by Chapter 20 of
the Illinois Compiled Statutes, 2630/8.
One should not try to make direct comparisons between agencies when analyzing I-UCR statistics. Such comparisons could be misleading unless demographic differences between jurisdictions are taken into account. Every community has unique social, ethnic, and economic factors which may affect its crime statistics. These dissimilarities may bias the results of any comparative analysis between agencies. The state of crime within a given jurisdiction is complex and cannot always be treated superficially, as it might be in direct agency-to-agency comparisons.
