The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) was first introduced in 1929, and through this program, crime data was collected utilizing the Summary Reporting System (SRS). This system allowed for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to compile and report on select categories of crime and, in turn, served as an essential resource for measuring the incidence and prevalence of crime in the United States for law enforcement, policymakers, researchers, and the general public. While revolutionary at the time, SRS contained several structural constraints limiting the ability to capture the complexity of criminal incidents. For example, the SRS collected information on the offense and arrest for only 10 Part I crimes and arrest-only information for 29 Part II crimes. Data collection was further limited by the hierarchy rule in which only the most serious offense within a single incident was reported. Due to these limitations, by the late 1970s, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) called for a review of the UCR program. In response to this and other concerns, the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) formed a joint task force to examine changing the program. (To learn more about the UCR program, please visit: https://ucr.fbi.gov).
The framework for the National Incident-Based System (NIBRS) resulted from the task force. It was published in The Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (Poggio, Kennedy, Chaiken, and Carlson, 1985). The new system's objective was to improve and expand data collection, data quality, and analytic capabilities of the law enforcement community. Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) began transitioning to NIBRS in the late 1980s.
In contrast to SRS, NIBRS was designed to capture information on each crime incident, including details on the victim(s), offender(s), relationships, and event characteristics (e.g., time of day, location). NIBRS collects incident and arrest data on 52 Group A and 10 Group B offense classifications and can collect data on up to 10 criminal offenses per incident. Furthermore, large data sets can be analyzed since NIBRS core elements are standardized across states and localities. It has been and continues to be the belief that these improvements provide a solid foundation for tactical decision-making, strategic planning, and offender tracking through the criminal justice system, research, and reporting.
What is the difference between National and State IBR Systems?
IBR systems, developed at the local and state levels, involve comprehensive data collection of criminal incidents. Like NIBRS, IBR systems collect information on the location, offense(s), offender(s), victim(s), property, and arrestee(s) associated with a criminal incident. However, the type and format of information collected can differ from the NIBRS standard, as state IBR systems are tailored to local and state crime concerns and data needs.
Local or state law enforcement agencies with an existing IBR system could modify their system to satisfy NIBRS requirements. Alternatively, agencies without a pre-existing IBR system could implement NIBRS and expand capabilities to meet internal agency requirements while remaining NIBRS compliant.
Barriers to Implementation
The barriers to implementing NIBRS were recognized early. The Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program acknowledged the limited resources and challenges LEAs faced in collecting and reporting crime data (1). In 1997, the FBI and BJS collaborated on examining the NIBRS implementation process. Seven key impediments to implementation emerged: administrative issues, federal and state reporting, education, data elements, funding, uncertainty of benefits, and policy concerns (Roberts, 1997). The three most pervasive issues were funding, the uncertainty of benefits, and policy concerns.
To successfully implement NIBRS, some LEAs needed to update their records management system (RMS), while others needed to replace it. Any changes or updates required additional investments of time and resources by LEAs (Bibel, 2015). In addition to any costs associated with upgrading technology and implementing an RMS, there was an increase in the demands placed upon law enforcement officers and other agency support staff for data entry, auditing, and reporting. It was not surprising to discover that the entry, auditing, reporting, and technology requirements were found to be financially prohibitive for several LEAs (National Incident-Based Reporting System, 2002; Roberts, 1997).
While replacing RMSs may have been financially prohibitive for some LEAs, more and more LEAs began to possess computer systems and to utilize sophisticated RMSs. In 2007, for example, 65% of the smallest LEAs, which served populations with less than 10,000 residents, reported utilizing a RMS (Reaves, 2010). The increased technology integration into policing facilitated the adoption of NIBRS as LEAs had a springboard for implementation (Roberts, 2013).
2021 NIBRS Transition
On February 9, 2016, FBI Director James Comey announced that in January 2021, the UCR program would no longer accept SRS data and would transition to a NIBRS-only system. With this announcement, the FBI and other national agencies redoubled their efforts to facilitate the transition from SRS to NIBRS. Before the official announcement, there was a movement to direct federal funding to support the transition; in 2015, the FBI partnered with BJS to implement the National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X). This program provided financial and technical assistance to 400 agencies to facilitate their transition from SRS to NIBRS. Analysts could produce national crime estimates once the data for these 400 agencies were combined with the more than 6,600 agencies currently reporting NIBRS.