Carjacking

Incidence of Carjacking

Through the Uniform Crime Reporting program (UCR), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintains statistics on a number of major crimes, including auto thefts and armed robberies, reported in the United States on a yearly basis. Unfortunately, the crime of carjacking is not presently treated as a separate category of armed robbery that is tracked on a national level by the FBI. This situation has made it difficult to document whether the crime has actually increased nationwide over the years or whether publicity about sensational carjackings has given the appearance that the offense has grown. In the future, the FBI's new crime reporting format, the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) will include carjacking as a specific type of armed robbery (i.e., the taking of a motor vehicle by force or threat of force) and thus allow local law enforcement jurisdictions to include the crime in their regular crime reporting to the FBI. In addition, more detailed information about carjacking will be collected and reported, including data about victims and offenders.

Most metropolitan law enforcement agencies maintain their own crime statistics on carjacking allowing researchers to gauge the crime in specific cities. For example, the New Orleans Police Department reported 139 completed carjackings in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1999, a 37 percent decrease from the reported 222 carjackings in 1998. Likewise, some state crime reporting programs also track carjackings within their respective states. Maryland's state crime reporting program has maintained crime statistics on carjackings for several years. They found that there were 509 carjackings reported in 1998, a 19 percent decrease from the 626 reported in 1997. While this type of data is useful for understanding the extent and nature of carjacking locally and regionally, it does not give us a national representation of the crime.

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