Crime stats at Pennsylvanians' fingertips

The Pennsylvania State Police — and state citizens — now have instant accessto detailed statewide crime statistics.

The Uniform Crime Reporting System's Web site (ucr.psp.state.pa.us)is the result of collaboration among Web business intelligence firm InformationBuilders Inc., Electronic Data Systems Corp. and the Pennsylvania StatePolice. It is designed to help police fight crime more effectively whileenabling citizens to have immediate access to the crime statistics of towns,counties, regions and college campuses.

Crime data previously was released in an annual report.

The Uniform Crime Reporting System site enables law enforcement andcitizens to analyze new data on a month-by-month basis. Features includetrend monitoring and tracking through archived data, personalized queriesand access to the annual "Crime in PA" report.

"The system we had was 25 years old and was in need of a major update,"said Carey Robinson, unit supervisor for the State Police. "Departmentswere sending us their reports assuming that their data was correct, butit often wasn't, and we'd end up spending time correcting their data."

The new system is the first Web-based unified crime reporting systemat the state level that allows for a complete tie-in from most local areasof law enforcement up to the federal level.