What is the difference between being accused or charged with a crime?

CMDS: What is the difference between being accused or charged with a crime?
If there was a police report filed against you but you were never charged with the crime, is that considered being accused of a crime?
To clarify, my friend’s grad school app says: Have you ever been arrested, cited, charged, accused, or prosecuted for any crime by a law enforcement agency other than a minor traffic violation? He has a couple police reports from a few years ago but was never charged.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Marko
legally, to be accused of a crime the police will charge you with it.

Answer by Rawr!
Anyone can accuse you of a crime. I could accuse you of stealing my wallet.

Answer by Phil
No. In this context accused means a formal accusation was made by a competent authority. That could only mean some sort of charges were placed or prosecuted. Otherwise I would think just about everyone has been “accused” of something criminal at one time or another. A police report is not a charge of any kind, it’s a report designed to preserve information but has no legal significance in this sense.

If he’s applying to law school however, he should get some advice from an attorney, since the underlying events that put him into those reports might be relevant to his ability to practice law later on.