B. Collection of Information Employing Statistical Methods.
1. The potential respondent universe of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) includes 18,415 law enforcement agencies (LEAs) voluntarily participating in the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The LEAs consist of approximately 11,690 local, 762 colleges and universities, 5,315 county, 436 state, 202 tribal, and 10 federal agencies. Of those agencies that voluntarily participate in the FBI UCR Program, approximately 6,420 submit data via the NIBRS. These agencies correlate to all population group sizes and have many diverse attributes. The agencies include a mix of population density and degrees of urbanization; various compositions of population, particularly youth concentration; population mobility with respect to residents’ mobility, commuting patterns, and transient factors; different economic conditions including median income, poverty level, and job availability; areas with different modes of transportation and highway systems; different cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics; family conditions with respect to divorce and family cohesiveness; climate; effective strength of law enforcement; policies of other components of the criminal justice system; citizens’ attitudes toward crime; and crime reporting practices of the citizenry. The chart below represents the number of participating agencies in the FBI UCR Program and the number of NIBRS agencies submitting one or more months of data.
Population Group |
UCR Program Participants SRS and NIBRS |
NIBRS Participants |
|||
Number of Agencies |
Population Covered |
Number of Agencies |
Population Covered |
||
Cities |
Group I (250,000 inhabitants and more) |
78 |
58,379,497 |
18 |
9,514,830 |
Group II (100,000 to 249,999 inhabitants) |
217 |
32,344,679 |
63 |
9,335,518 |
|
Group III (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants) |
484 |
33,381,466 |
147 |
10,306,774 |
|
Group IV (25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants) |
889 |
30,734,287 |
308 |
10,584,733 |
|
Group V (10,000 to 24,999 inhabitants) |
1,918 |
30,507,058 |
631 |
9,966,200 |
|
Group VI (Less than 10,000 inhabitants)1,2 |
9,633 |
26,639,602 |
3,323 |
9,368,752 |
|
Counties |
Group VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2 |
2,915 |
27,876,167 |
1,227 |
12,179,491 |
Group IX (Metropolitan County)2 |
2,281 |
76,266,083 |
703 |
21,647,341 |
|
|
Total |
18,415 |
316,128,839 |
6,420 |
92,903,639 |
1 Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.
2 Includes state police to which no population is attributed.
Out of the 6,420 agencies that voluntarily report data to the FBI UCR Program, approximately 5,505 submit twelve month complete data and 915 submit between one and eleven months of data. See chart below.
Number of months submitted |
Number of Agencies |
1 month |
138 |
2 months |
73 |
3 months |
48 |
4 months |
53 |
5 months |
57 |
6 months |
51 |
7 months |
59 |
8 months |
56 |
9 months |
66 |
10 months |
128 |
11 months |
186 |
12 months |
5,505 |
Total |
6,420 |
Non Responding NIBRS Agencies |
694 |
Of the 7,114 NIBRS agencies, 694 are non-reporters. These agencies are nonresponsive due to being understaffed, underfunded, or are implementing a new data record system. Even though these agencies are nonreporters they are considered participants of the Program and will submit data when the problems have been resolved.
Despite the fact that 77 percent of the NIBRS agencies respond with twelve months of complete data, participation in the NIBRS has been slow. This in turn has prompted the FBI UCR Program to enhance its outreach efforts by corroborating with the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to increase NIBRS participation, publishing the NIBRS data, providing the tools to submit NIBRS data, and by securing a NIBRS outreach subject matter expert.
The FBI’s UCR Program publishes NIBRS monographs and special studies to demonstrate the utility and richness of the NIBRS data; a 2011 NIBRS publication was released in August 2013, the 2012 NIBRS was released December 2013 and the 2013 NIBRS data was released in December 2014. For Crime in the United States (CIUS) the FBI converts NIBRS data to the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS) format. Once converted from NIBRS submissions, the SRS data are available as printouts to state and local agencies for review. The SRS printouts contain incident reports that are aggregated by offenses, arrests, property types and values, clearances, and details of homicides.
While NIBRS participants include a mix of population density and jurisdictions with different sociodemographic conditions, the current NIBRS participants are not a representative sample and therefore not used to calculate NIBRS national estimates of broader populations. However, the FBI UCR Program is taking steps to increase NIBRS participation through the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division’s support in the National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X), an effort led by BJS. The goal of the NCS-X project is to strategically expand the number of law enforcement agencies reporting incident-based data to the FBI through the NIBRS so that accurate and detailed national estimates of crime in the United States can be calculated.
2. NIBRS data are collected/received from state UCR Program participants on a monthly basis. The FBI UCR Program has established various time frames and deadlines for acquiring the monthly data. Annual deadlines are also designated in order to collect/assess receipt of monthly submissions. There are times when special circumstances may cause an agency to request an extension. The FBI UCR Program has the authority to grant these extensions.
The NIBRS is an incident-based reporting system which means data are collected on each single crime occurrence. The NIBRS data are designed to be generated as a byproduct of local, state, and federal automated records systems. Thus, an agency can build its own system to suit its individual needs, including all the information required for administrative and operational purposes. Only the data required by NIBRS are then reported to the national UCR Program.
The NIBRS is used by participating LEAs to report offenses and relevant details by incident, using up to 58 data elements to collect details about offenses, offenders, victims, property, and arrestees reported to police. Developed in the late 1980s, the NIBRS was designed as an automated system to modernize UCR, and includes automated checks to ensure data quality.
As the NIBRS data collection is intended to collect detailed incident-based data in the U.S., sampling methodologies are not used. The FBI UCR Program does convert the NIBRS data to SRS data standards and then does apply estimation procedures based on the SRS estimation procedures to compensate for the missing jurisdictions. Using well-established procedures, the FBI UCR Program estimates for missing data for agencies with partial reports and for nonreporting agencies and then aggregates these estimates to determine the number of offenses for the total U. S. Population. Crime in the United States (CIUS) presents these approximations in Tables 1-7. The Program estimates offenses that occur within each of three areas: Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), cities outside MSAs, and nonmetropolitan counties. The national Program computes estimates by using the known crime figures of similar areas within a state and assigning the same proportion of crime volumes to nonreporting agencies or agencies with missing data. The estimation process considers the following: population size of agency; type of jurisdiction, e.g., police department versus sheriff’s office; and geographic location.
Although the program historically uses estimation procedures to account for missing data in presentations such as Crime in the United States, it did not apply any estimation procedures to the 2011-2013 NIBRS publications to account for missing data for jurisdictions that do not submit their UCR data via the NIBRS or of non-participating jurisdictions. It included the actual NIBRS data submitted by agencies. The purpose of these publications was to demonstrate the utility of the NIBRS data. NIBRS data has not been tested to determine if it is a national representation of crime data; therefore estimation procedures for NIBRS data have not been completed.
The difference between NIBRS and the traditional SRS is the degree of detail in reporting. In the traditional system, LEAs tally the number of occurrences of Part I offenses, as well as arrest data for both Part I and Part II offenses, and submit aggregate counts of the collected data in monthly summary reports either directly to the FBI or indirectly through state UCR Programs. Therefore, the traditional UCR Program can best be described as a summary reporting system. The types of data tallied include the number of offenses; clearances; types and values of stolen and recovered property; and the age, sex, and race of persons who are arrested. Expanded data are collected on homicides (i.e., Murder and Nonnegligent Manslaughter, Manslaughter by Negligence, and Justifiable Homicide) through the use of Supplementary Homicide Reports. Furthermore, there are no requirements to tie arrests and exceptional clearances back to previously submitted incident reports.
In NIBRS, LEAs collect detailed data regarding individual crime incidents and arrests and submit them in separate reports using prescribed data elements and data values to describe each incident and arrest. Therefore, NIBRS involves incident-based reporting. The NIBRS currently collects data on each incident and arrest within 23 crime categories made up of 49 specific crimes called Group A offenses. For each of the offenses coming to the attention of law enforcement, various facts about the crime are collected. After implementing the new animal cruelty and fraud offenses the number of crime categories will increase to 24 and the Group A offenses to 52. In addition to the Group A offenses, there are 10 Group B offense categories for which only arrest data are reported.
The most significant difference between NIBRS and the traditional SRS is the degree of detail in reporting. In reporting data via the traditional SRS, LEAs tally the occurrences of ten Part I crimes. NIBRS is capable of producing more detailed, accurate, and meaningful data because data are collected about when and where crime takes place, what form it takes, and the characteristics of its victims and perpetrators. Although most of the general concepts for collecting, scoring, and reporting UCR data in the SRS apply in the NIBRS, such as jurisdictional rules, there are some important differences in the two systems. The most notable differences that give the NIBRS an advantage over the SRS are: No Hierarchy Rule, in a multiple-offense incident NIBRS reports every offense occurring during the incident where SRS would report just the most serious offense and the lower-listed offense would not be reported; NIBRS provides revised, expanded, and new offense definitions; NIBRS provides more specificity in reporting offenses, using NIBRS offense and arrest data for 24 Group A offense categories can be reported while in the SRS ten Part I offenses can be reported; NIBRS can distinguish between attempted and completed Group A crimes; NIBRS also provides crimes against society while the SRS does not; the victim-to-offender data, circumstance reporting , drug related offenses, offenders suspected use of drugs, and computer crime is expanded in NIBRS; the NIBRS update reports are directly tied to the original incident submitted. The Group A offense categories include animal cruelty, arson, assault offenses, bribery, burglary/breaking and entering, counterfeiting/forgery, destruction/damage/vandalism of property, drug/narcotic offenses, embezzlement, extortion/blackmail, fraud offenses, gambling offenses, homicide offenses, human trafficking, kidnapping/abduction, larceny/theft offenses, motor vehicle theft, pornography/obscene material, prostitution offenses, robbery, sex offenses, sex offenses/nonforcible, stolen property offenses, and weapon law violations. The Group B offense categories include bad checks, curfew/loitering/vagrancy violations, disorderly conduct, DUI, drunkenness, family offenses/nonviolent, liquor law violations, peeping tom, trespass of real property, and all other offenses.
Since data collected by NIBRS are considerably more comprehensive than those of the traditional summary UCR system, agencies wishing to participate should have computerized data systems capable of processing NIBRS information. NIBRS was designed to be a byproduct of an existing automated law enforcement records system.
Full participation in NIBRS necessitates meeting all the reporting guidelines and requirements set forth. Before a local agency begins submitting NIBRS data directly to the FBI, the agency will be asked to demonstrate its ability to meet NIBRS’ reporting requirements by submitting test data to the FBI. If a local agency is going to participate indirectly through its state UCR Program, it is the state’s responsibility to ensure that the local agency is able to fulfill NIBRS’ data submission requirements.
3. Response rates are maximized through liaison with state UCR programs. Communications encouraging data submissions occur frequently because of the relationship between the FBI UCR Program staff and LEAs. FBI UCR Staff have a strong understanding of contextual challenges agencies face in reporting valid and reliable data and regularly work to overcome nonresponse issues when such challenges occur. The mission of the FBI UCR Program is to promote the NIBRS by active liaison with the state UCR Programs and the national LEAs to encourage participation. To encourage the submission of data, a listing of missing reports are sent to state UCR Programs and individual LEAs twice a year and then follow up contact is also made to those agencies to further encourage the submission of missing data. FBI UCR Program staff assists agencies in submitting 12 months of complete data through continuous communication.
Currently, 77 percent of the NIBRS participating LEAs report 12 months of complete data to the national Program. The FBI is working to promote the participation in NIBRS along with the FBI CJIS UCR Redevelopment Project (UCRRP). The UCRRP will manage the acquisition, development, and integration of a new information systems solution which affects UCR participating local, state, tribal and federal LEAs. The UCRRP's goal is to improve UCR efficiency, usability, and maintainability while increasing the value to users of UCR products.
Another way the FBI UCR Program is trying to increase NIBRS participation is through the FBI CJIS Division’s support in the NCS-X, an effort led by BJS. The goal of the NCS-X project is to strategically expand the number of LEAs reporting incident-based data to the FBI through the NIBRS so that accurate and detailed national estimates of crime in the United States can be calculated. BJS has determined that if data can be obtained from an additional 400 scientifically sampled LEAs and added to the data from the existing 6,000 NIBRS reporters, then statistically sound and detailed national crime estimates can be generated using NIBRS data. The NCS-X project is designed to assess impediments to reporting NIBRS data faced by these 400 sample agencies and to provide funding and technical assistance to the sample agencies and to state UCR/NIBRS programs that will enable them to report these additional incident-based data to the FBI.
To date, the NCS-X Team has consulted with 47 state UCR Program coordinators, and the sample agencies have been surveyed to assess NIBRS capability. Readiness assessments have been completed for 16 sample agencies and 10 UCR state programs. The records management system (RMS) service providers have been involved in the process in order to determine the complexities and costs associated with adding the NIBRS reporting to their products. Presently, 33 states are certified to report data via the NIBRS. Sixteen of these states report 100 percent of their data via NIBRS. Seventeen states report using both SRS and NIBRS, while another 17 states report data via SRS. Two of the 17 SRS states report directly to the FBI because they have no designated state UCR Program.
A known key factor in preventing fuller participation is the perception that an agency’s crime rate will increase with the reporting of NIBRS. To suppress this misconception the FBI UCR Program has assigned a NIBRS outreach subject matter expert to coordinate an effort to educate and address the utility of the NIBRS data.
Marketing tools have been created to share with law enforcement entities interested in transitioning from SRS to the NIBRS which include a NIBRS Quick Facts Document and a NIBRS Overview document. The NIBRS Quick Facts document provides information on the NIBRS. It provides information on the Group A and Group B offenses, the offense categories of Crime Against Persons, Property, and Society, and the benefits of the NIBRS such as no hierarchy rule, capture of each offense within an incident (up to 10), correlation between offenses, property, victims, offenders, and arrestees, etc.; the NIBRS Overview document provides a quick summary of the history of NIBRS, what the NIBRS is, and its value.
To address the public relations aspect of the NIBRS, a NIBRS media package has been created to share with LEAs transitioning from the SRS to the NIBRS. The media package provides law enforcement with the information to educate the public and media representatives.
The 2011-2013 NIBRS data has been published. All the comment and feedback from these NIBRS publications have been analyzed to identify user endorsed improvements that can be included in future NIBRS publication products.
At the fall 2011 CJIS Advisory Policy Board (APB) members generated a discussion in regard to the impacts and advantages of ending the collection of data in the SRS and making submissions to the FBI UCR Program NIBRS only. APB members asked the Crime Statistics Management Unit (CSMU) to conduct a study reviewing the impacts. In response a Management and Program Analyst has been tasked with developing an exploratory study into transitioning the FBI UCR Program from SRS to a NIBRS-only data collection. The study will examine the history of UCR and the laws that govern the program, provide an analysis of SRS and NIBRS agencies, study the cost analysis of maintaining both collections, outline the uses of the NIBRS data, explore grants, reach out to stakeholders and partners for impact, outline the advantages and disadvantages of eliminating SRS, and propose a timeline for transitioning to a NIBRS only collection. FBI Director James B. Comey also endorsed this concept in late 2014 by making the NIBRS transition a Director’s Priority Initiative in an effort to improve the nation’s UCR crime statistics for reliability, accuracy, accessibility, and timeliness.
The findings of the exploratory study were presented to the APB in Spring 2015. The APB requested the UCR Program to develop a Working Group topic paper for the Fall 2015 round regarding a potential UCR transition to NIBRS and retire SRS. This topic paper, to be presented to the Fall Working Groups in August 2015, will include discussion concerning funding mechanisms to support local, state, and tribal agencies. The APB suggested the UCR Program include outreach and responses from the following non-governmental organizations: Major County Sheriffs’ Association (MCSA), Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), US Conference of Mayors, National Governors Association, and National Association of Counties.
A critical component of the NCS-X initiative and the FBI transition to a NIBRS-only data collection is to engage and assist state UCR Programs without NIBRS capability. Assistance for establishing NIBRS-certified components in the 15 states that have an established state UCR Program but currently report only to the SRS, and expanding the amount of incident-based data collected in the 17 states with a NIBRS component that receive incident-based data from less than 80% of LEAs will be provided.
The FBI strategy to transition the national Program to a NIBRS-only data collection is to collaborate with the major law enforcement and other applicable groups and organizations to provide outreach and support for this transition; organizations such as MCSA, MCCA, IACP, NSA, US Conference of Mayors, National Governors Association, National Association of Counties, and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).
The FBI will coordinate with these organizations along with the White House Office of Domestic Policy, victim advocacy groups, the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Modernizing the Nation’s Crime Statistics, as well as continued efforts with the BJS, to encourage law enforcement participation, demonstrate the value of the NIBRS and ensure the data collection remains relevant to law enforcement, establish a timeline to sunset the SRS, communicate there is only one NIBRS standard: the NIBRS Technical Specification, debunk the perception crime will go up with the NIBRS, and create a media packet to address concerns about the NIBRS.
Educating stakeholders and demonstrating operational and policy value of the NIBRS are key components to the success of this transition. The NIBRS answers the “who” of crime – victims, offenders, and arrestees. It provides data to study crimes which helps law enforcement administrators better understand how to prevent and combat crimes occurring within their jurisdictions. LEAs can then build partnerships to develop strategies to reduce or respond to specific crime categories, or improve local crime trends. These practices can demonstrate an LEA’s commitment to transparency and accountability in policing.
Training also encourages participation in the FBI UCR Program. The FBI has trainers who provide on-site training for any LEA that participates in the FBI UCR Program. The trainers furnish introductory, intermediate, or advanced courses in data collection procedures and guidelines. In addition, the trainers are available by telephone or e-mail to provide LEAs with answers to specific questions about classification or scoring.
The Association of State Uniform Crime Reporting Programs (ASUCRP) focuses on UCR issues within individual state law enforcement associations and also promotes interest in the FBI UCR Program. This organization fosters responsible use of uniform crime statistics and lends assistance to data contributors when needed.
Although the FBI makes an effort through its editing procedures, training practices, and correspondence to ensure the validity of the data it receives, the accuracy of the statistics depends primarily on the adherence of each contributor to the established standards of reporting. The FBI relies on the integrity of data contributors reporting data, as well as, Quality Assurance Reviews conducted by the CJIS Audit Unit on a triennial basis. The results of the audits are not used to adjust crime data, but are used to educate reporting agencies on compliance with national UCR guidelines.
4. The UCR Program conducted exploratory interviews with 20 RMS managers throughout Colorado to recognize problems of misunderstanding and to identify instructional issues respondents had when answering question pertaining to the new NIBRS offenses of Animal Cruelty, Identity Theft, and Hacking/Computer Invasion, as well as the cyberspace location code. The twenty participants were comprised of 7 representatives from a small city police department, 5 representatives from a large city police department, 5 participants from a county sheriff’s office, 1 representative from a campus police agency, 1 representative from the state police, and 1 representative from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
The method for the exploratory interviews involved asking each participant to review the materials received in an e-mail prior to a telephone interview. During the telephone interviews, the FBI interviewer asked specific questions to determine how respondents came up with their answers. The objective was to identify problems of ambiguity or misunderstanding, identify instructional improvements, and to highlight other difficulties respondents had in answering questions. Participants were provided with four incident examples for animal cruelty and two examples each for identity theft and hacking/computer invasion, one of which coincided with the new cyberspace location code. These incident scenarios were used to determine if the participants understand the criteria for determining the offenses and to ensure they provide consistent, reliable results for future research and analysis when these components are fully implemented.
The interviews uncovered the following results:
Animal Cruelty
The NIBRS User Manual provides sufficient detail for both the definition and data values associated with the new animal cruelty offense.
Certain scenarios contained ambiguity; while most participants were able to reach the correct conclusion, most recommended the UCR Program add additional details to the scenarios to focus them more towards the specific answer.
Individual bias or feelings were a major factor in the conclusions reached for the individual scenarios.
Cyberspace (Location Code)
Those record managers that had a stronger technical background were able to properly identify cyberspace as a location code, however, those participants without a solid technical background struggled with the use of the cyberspace location code.
Identity Theft
The definition for identity theft adequately describes the new fraud offense.
Several questions arose from the scenarios referencing the 26F = Identity Theft offense which centered on utilizing other fraud offenses, impersonation, credit card fraud, etc., based on the end user inferring information from the scenario.
Hacking/Computer Invasion
The definition for hacking/computer invasion adequately describes the new fraud offense.
Limited questions arose from the scenarios referencing the 26G = Hacking/Computer Invasion offense which centered around utilizing other fraud offenses based on the end user inferring information from the scenario.
The appropriate changes uncovered from the exploratory interviews were implemented within the NIBRS User Manual for the Paperwork Reduction Act submission. Details pertaining to the cognitive testing can be found in the supplementary documents of this Information Collection Review.
5. John H. Derbas
LESS Chief
304-625-3690
Samuel Berhanu
CSMU Chief
304-625-3692
James H. Noonan
Statistician
304-625-2927
Nelson Ferry
Management Analyst and Program Analyst
304-325-2782
Kristi L. Donahue
Management Analyst and Program Analyst (OMB PWRA Point of Contact)
304-625-2972
| File Type | application/msword |
| Author | phanning |
| Last Modified By | Donahue, Kristi L |
| File Modified | 2015-08-05 |
| File Created | 2015-07-02 |