Offenses should be uniformly entered into the data base according to categories descriptive of the incident (e.g., time, place, perpetrator, victim, weapon, etc.); background factors relating to social control, an offender's personality, and social circumstances; and conditions providing opportunity for the crime. The intent of such crime analyses is to obtain a realistic picture of current crimes and factors associated with them, so that law enforcement and prevention measures can be targeted to the actual extant conditions rather than presumed or outdated ones. Data bases where crime information is gathered already exist in West Germany as well as abroad. The above scheme is presented to facilitate improved organization of the information and to eliminate redundancies, thereby enabling a better grasp of its implications by analysts. One table and 12 footnotes are given.