Understanding NIBRS Data Quality

• In Event: Data Issues in Criminal Justice and Criminology Research

Abstract

Data produced by the FBI’s National Incident-Based Crime Reporting System (NIBRS) offers exceptional opportunities for understanding crime. Despite the increasing number of agencies reporting incident crime data through NIBRS, data quality concerns persist due to lack of national coverage, over representation of smaller population areas and incomplete reporting of item data. Using our relational data base implementation of NIBRS, which contains over 90 million incidents for the years 1995 to 2017, we examine violent and property crime breakdowns and trends and compare these with results derived from Uniform Crime Reporting Program Summary Reporting System data and other crime data sources. In addition, we examine the extent of reporting of multi-response data items in NIBRS for selected offenses and track how these are changing as agencies increasingly employ record management systems with NIBRS reporting capabilities. We compare established studies such as “offender suspected of using” in domestic violence incidents to see if NIBRS data predict results similar to those derived from other data sources. Finally, we describe modifications that will allow the database to accommodate the increased number of incidents reported each year as the FBI UCR Program transitions to complete reporting through the NIBRS in 2021.

Authors

• Douglas Salane, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Eman Abdu, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

• Peter Shenkin, John Jay College of Criminal Justice