Does something smell funny?: Ensuring NIBRS Reporting Quality for Policy and Research

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

Abstract

The transition to incident-based reporting nationally presents opportunities for analysis about the nature of crime and challenges to law enforcement agencies accustomed to reporting summary data. We assess whether implementation of NIBRS resulted in unexpected or anticipated changes in crime counts that pre-existing patterns and trends cannot explain in the state of Georgia. We assessed crime statistics in 114 law enforcement agencies, equally split between police departments and sheriffs’ offices, from January 2015 to March 2021. We use fixed effects regression to test breaks in series for crime counts and rates in the 3- and 6-month period after implementation. We also assess for CoVID-19 pandemic effects. We control for both crime type and agency size. We find that after an “initial NIBRS implementation period” disruption from October 2019 through January 2020, the crime counts in the study’s sample of agencies returned to expected levels. A few, larger police departments experienced disruptions in reporting, which drove the breaks in series. The coincidence of the COVID-19 Pandemic with the implementation of NIBRS, made it impossible to disentangle these two effects that occurred simultaneously in Georgia. Results provide GBI and BJS methods to adjust crime statistics account for short-term disruptions.

Authors

• Mary Jane Parker, Criminal Justice Coordinating Council of Georgia

• William Sabol, Georgia State University

• Stefanie Lopez-Howard, Georgia Statistical Analysis Center, Criminal Justice Coordinating Council