Engaging Research in Working with NIBRS Data: An Overview of the NIBRS Extract File Process

• In Event: NIBRS in Action: New Horizons for Data Analysis and Availability

Abstract

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the official source of data on crimes recorded by law enforcement in the U.S. since 2021, marked a significant shift in how crime is measured in the U.S. NIBRS captures over fifty unique crime types, multiple victim types, property loss, greater detail on drug crimes and weapons, and characteristics of victims and offenders. These detailed incident characteristics enhance our understanding of the levels and nature of crime in the U.S. However, working with NIBRS data also poses challenges due the size and complexity of incident-based crime data. We provide an overview of Bureau of Justice Statistics efforts to create NIBRS extract files that combine and concatenate the NIBRS segments. Extract files provide data users publicly available data files that can be imported into widely available statistical software for analysis. We will present methods to translate the hierarchical NIBRS data structure, which is separated into 8 separate segments, into extract files that can be analyzed at multiple units of analysis, such as a victim or offender-based analysis. The presentation will conclude with a discussion of software and coding examples used to create the Bureau of Justice Statistics NIBRS extract files.

Authors

• Christopher Townsend, RTI International

• Sean Wire, RTI International

• Kimberly Martin, Bureau of Justice Statistics