A graduate student is using the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey and would like to do some analysis of the content on ArcGIS. The UCR provides census tracts but he was looking for a way to get specific coordinates so that the data could be mapped using this software. Is there any way this can be done? My general understanding of how GIS software works makes me believe it is a ‘no’ (although no harm in asking!). Has anyone experienced a similar request or figured out a work-around?
Answer
The subject matter specialists confirmed that "the UCR files that we have in CCJS as well as those that are in the RDC do not have geocode information (Postal code, or address).
Many academics are confused when they hear that we do not have low level geography data on the file, as they know that CCJS many years ago released a series of analytical reports using small levels of geography for several Canadian CMAs. For these studies we received additional funds to work with police services that provided us with additional “address files” which we then cleaned and verified the quality of the addresses.
The lowest level of geography that is available on the RDC files is CMA and through our CANSIM tables end users can obtain counts of offences by the police service level.
In the DLI, we have some UCR data by police service and as mentioned the one-time release at the census tract level.
