National Incident-Based Reporting System

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a federally operated criminal database listing incident-level offenses reported by local, state, tribal, territorial, and federal law enforcement agencies annually. Before the creation of NIBRS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) provided the only nationwide statistics for criminal offenses. UCR limitations include inaccessibility to more incident-level characteristics of crime, hierarchical crime reporting, and limited victim and offender information. In 1982, a research initiative was begun to address UCR limitations, which resulted in the development of NIBRS to expand the UCR database by allowing for the reporting of incident-level crime characteristics. Between 1992 and 1995, the implementation of the NIBRS database became official. To become certified to report crime data, states are required to participate in a preliminary testing phase in NIBRS. Once the requirements set forth for participation are met, the agency/state is deemed NIBRS certified. Being NIBRS certified means the incident-based data submitted during the NIBRS certification process was consistent with FBI UCR Program standards.

By 1995, 9 states had become certified to report crime data, and by 1999, 18 states had completed the certification process. It is important to note that not all law enforcement agencies within an NIBRS-certified state will necessarily report criminal [Page 459]incidents to the FBI, since participation is voluntary. Much of the data required for NIBRS are already collected at the agency level by officers preparing incident and arrest reports. However, data extracted from such reports for NIBRS are more detailed and, therefore, require increased time for data entry and data processing. NIBRS reporting is still going through developmental stages in uncertified states, while a few states show no intention of reporting to NIBRS.

As of June 2012, 32 states were certified and 15 states were submitting incident-based data covering 100% of their state agencies. In addition, 7 states or territories were in the developmental phases, 7 states were in the testing phase, and 6 states had no formalized plan to report incident-based data. Although NIBRS is not representative of crime in the United States, it covers approximately 29% of the population, representing 27% of the nation's reported crime and 43% of law enforcement agencies. As of 2013, NIBRS represents the most detailed criminal database available. A complete listing of states and the number of participating agencies can be found on the Justice Research and Statistics Association's website: http://www.jrsa.org/ibrrc/background-status/nibrs_states.shtml.