Microproduct data guideintermediate

FBI Crime Data Explorer

Uniform Crime Reporting summaries and NIBRS extracts for building U.S. crime trend and agency-comparison tools.

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At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Medium · ≤5 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV
Access
API or Download
API key
Required
Provider
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Updates
Annual
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The FBI Crime Data API returns Uniform Crime Reporting summaries. Start with national participation or one state series after requesting a free api.data.gov key. Agency coverage is voluntary, SRS and NIBRS are not interchangeable, and recent years can be incomplete.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • A free api.data.gov key saved in the FBI_CDE_API_KEY environment variable
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open Crime Data Explorer and request a free key at api.data.gov.
  2. 2.Read the API documentation for summarized state estimates.
  3. 3.Request a bounded violent-crime series for one state.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import os
import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://api.usa.gov/crime/fbi/sapi/api/estimates/states/CA/2020/2022",
    params={"api_key": os.environ["FBI_CDE_API_KEY"]},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
estimates = pd.DataFrame(response.json().get("results", response.json()))
print(estimates.head())
4

Test a useful signal

Compare one state's reported violent crime across three years

Test whether CDE estimates can power a bounded state crime trend.

  1. 01Keep year, state, and violent-crime counts from the estimates response.
  2. 02Chart the three-year series and record any missing years.
  3. 03Explain that voluntary reporting, SRS-to-NIBRS transition, and population changes limit year-to-year comparison.

Dataset details

Federal Bureau of Investigation is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-18. Temporal coverage: 1985-present summarized UCR series.

Theme

Government & Policy

Domains

Public SafetyCrimeJustice

Data types

Event DataTime Series

Tasks

Trend AnalysisGeographic AnalysisAgency Comparison

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSV

Provider

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance