Estimated Number of Arrests
United States, 2009
The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
General comments
- This table provides the estimated number of persons arrested in the United States in 2009.
- The UCR Program collects arrest data for 29 offenses.
Methodology
The data used in creating the national estimates for this table were from all law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of arrest data for 2009.
Arrest estimation
- The arrest totals presented are national estimates based on the arrest statistics of all law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of arrest data to the UCR Program.
- The estimated total number of arrests in this table is the sum of estimated arrest volumes for 28 offenses, not including suspicion.
- The arrest data for each of the individual offenses in this table is the sum of the estimated volume for that offense within each of the eight population groups. (See Area Definitions).
- The FBI calculated each of the eight population group’s arrest estimates by dividing the reported 12-month volume figures (as shown in Table 31) by the contributing agencies’ jurisdictional populations. The resulting figure was then
multiplied by the total population for each population group as estimated by the UCR Program.
Population estimation
For the 2009 population estimates used in this table, the FBI computed individual rates of growth from one year to the next for every city/town and county using 2000 decennial population counts and 2001 through 2008 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each agency’s rates of growth were averaged; that average was then applied and added to its 2008 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2009 population estimate.