Section V: special reports

Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the United States, Annual, 2002

Further, the bank robbery totals are collected on the form entitled Supplement to the Monthly Return of Offenses Known To The Police (Return A), but not on the Return A itself. If the supplement is not submitted, a robbery on the Return A cannot be counted as bank robbery. Thus, it may be the case that some robberies listed on the Return A and, therefore, in Crime in the United States, are bank robberies and are not captured in the Summary data.

Even though the NIBRS has distinct benefits as a data source, it is limited in its scope. Currently, agencies from 24 states, representing 17 percent of the U.S. population, participate in the program. These data lack the cross-sectional representation of incidents and cannot be treated as a sample. There are no cities participating that have populations greater than 1 million inhabitants. There are only 11 cities or consolidated counties that contribute NIBRS data whose population is more than 250,000. With this limitation, NIBRS data may not represent the crime experience in the entire United States.

Like the Summary UCR and NIBRS data, the BCS database also has its limitations. Only robberies of banks and financial institutions covered under the Bank Robbery and Incidental Crime Statute and its progeny are included. Further, the NIBRS includes, but BCS does not, specific information on each victim, offender, and arrestee. Finally, BCS is an investigative system; consequently the data are not available for use by the public.

Summary and Conclusions

The objective of depicting bank robbery from the data collected by the FBI has been met. Further, this realization of bank robbery through the use of these data has been an opportunity to compare and contrast elements in the databases--particularly the NIBRS data and the BCS data. These are preliminary findings and require further study.

The presentation of incident characteristics has emphasized the similarity of data submitted to the FBI's NIBRS program by local and state law enforcement to that submitted to the Violent Crimes/Fugitive Unit of the FBI by the separate FBI field offices. Both Summary UCR data and BCS indicate the same trends in the numbers of bank robberies over a 12-year period, 1990-2001.

Further, NIBRS data showing days of the week on which the greatest number of bank robberies occur and the hours during which they are most prevalent are very similar to BCS data, with Friday mornings generally the modal day and time for bank robberies.

In both databases, violence and injury are very low, an unexpected finding since one element of the crime is force or the threat of force. The similarity between the two databases concerning this unanticipated result adds further validation to the quality of NIBRS data.

Evidence of offender race and gender is also quite comparable between the two databases, with the number of whites committing bank robbery reported in NIBRS data very close to the number reported in BCS and the same for blacks. Reported gender of bank robbers is virtually identical in both databases.