The World According to Incident-Based Data on Reported Crime: New and Innovative Uses of NIBRS Data

• In Event: National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X): Increasing Use of Incident-Based Data to Strengthen Law Enforcement Decision-Making

Abstract

Criminal justice researchers have long relied up aggregated counts of annual crime to calculate population based crime rates. Those calculations have often been constrained to the eight Part I Index offenses collected through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. However, rates based on UCR offenses cannot account for variation within offense categories, obscuring differences among population groups in their vulnerability to different types of crimes. Utilizing detailed incident-based crime data collected through the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), this presentation examines new ways that incident-based crime data can be used to understand the nature of crime and victimization. Information on generating victimization rates will be presented, disaggregated by victim and incident characteristics, as well as by place size. NIBRS data will also be used to illustrate how typical crime categories are anything but homogenous, and differ greatly for specific demographic populations, such as children, young adults, and the elderly.

Authors

• Erica L. Smith, U.S. Department of Justice

• Alexia Cooper, Bureau of Justice Statistics, USDOJ