Collecting crime data has always been difficult and will always likely remain so. 

But just because collecting crime statistics is difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done — it absolutely should. Yet one troubling fact about Pennsylvania’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) database stands out to us as needing a change.

In the UCR’s current iteration, law enforcement agencies that submit their statistics to the database are also free to go back in and make retroactive edits.

Clearly, if a mistake is made, it should be corrected; it’s hard to imagine someone arguing otherwise. But the database can’t be so wide open to retroactive edits it would allow a bad actor to whitewash past problems or cover up prior submissions to the database that were so flawed as to possibly cause harm. As such, untraceable, retroactive edits can not be allowed.

This problem came to Broad + Liberty’s attention when chronicling a municipality that was underreporting homicides. After those reports, the municipality went back into the UCR system and updated the numbers.

Just to reiterate — making edits to get the numbers right is absolutely necessary. However, in order to have the utmost confidence in the project, the public needs a way to see when (and by whom) edits are made. 

When Broad + Liberty asked the Pennsylvania State Police whether “stealth edits” might be problematic, the agency gave a generic response that put most of the onus on the standards created by the FBI for UCR databases.

“The FBI sets submission guidelines and quality assurance standards for the UCR program,” PSP communications director Myles Snyder said. “The FBI’s Privacy Impact Assessment includes information on how [law enforcement agencies] manage their data, how data is submitted, and who may access the database. The Data Quality Guidelines address the FBI’s procedures for data quality and compatibility, as well as quality assurance audits and reviews.”

This response didn’t really answer the question, and neither of the websites Snyder linked have much information about retroactive edits.

The fix is for the PSP to begin creating archived data sets available for download by the public. For example, the PSP could begin archiving the UCR data on the first of every month, and make the last 24 months of those data sets available for download somewhere on the UCR website.

We won’t have the hubris to say making that change would be easy. Maybe it would be, perhaps it would be more difficult.

Whatever the case, to the degree the crime data project is necessary (as we believe it is), then it’s necessary to do it right. State lawmakers should ask PSP how to solve the stealth edit problem, and get a fix implemented in 2025.