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Incident-Based Statistics

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About incident-based statistics and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

Traditionally, crime reports consist of monthly counts of offenses and arrests for certain offense categories. State and local agencies report these summary data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. These reports provide little information about the characteristics of crimes, victims, offenders or arrests. Use of these data in research and policy analysis is severely limited.

Collecting data about each incident overcomes many of these deficiencies. Along with the Summary UCR, the FBI has been collecting incident-based data on homicide through the Supplementary Homicide Reports for many years. Several States and localities implemented incident-based systems for collecting crime statistics in the 1970's.

The FBI recognized the need for additional information about crime that was comparable across jurisdictions and included more types of crime. After much study, the FBI launched the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Compared to Summary UCR, NIBRS collects more details on more categories of crime, including concurrent offenses, weapons, injury, location, property loss and characteristics of the victims, offenders and arrestees. Because State and local agencies also collect details outside the scope of NIBRS, such as incident addresses, NIBRS is usually a subset of State and local incident-based data.

NIBRS increases what we know about crime due to:

  • Expansion of the number of offense categories included.
  • Detail on individual crime incidents (offenses, offenders, victims, property, and arrests)
  • Linkage between arrests and clearances to specific incidents or offenses.
  • Inclusion of all offenses in an incident rather than only the most serious offense.
  • The ability to distinguish between attempted and completed crimes.
  • Linkages between offense, offender, victim, property, and arrestee variables which permits examination of interrelationships.

The UCR Program is being rapidly expanded with NIBRS. In 1991 South Carolina and North Dakota, the first certified states, began submitting data following FBI standards and definitions. As of 2001, more than 3,725 agencies across 21 States submit NIBRS data. In seven of these states 90 to 100 percent of the population is covered by NIBRS reporting. (See the current level of UCR and NIBRS participation by State as of December, 2003.)

While national-level data are not currently available, analysts and researchers will find a wealth of information about crime in the NIBRS data that is available. The data, along with descriptive information on its structure and use, can be freely obtained online from the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, a BJS sponsored program (See Resources for analyzing NIBRS data below). Further examples of the type of information that can be developed from incident-based systems are presented under publications.

Sample findings

Hate crime

NIBRS captures a wide range of information on specific bias-motivated incidents. The 1997-99 NIBRS data showed that out of nearly 5.4 million offenses reported to NIBRS agencies in nearly a dozen States, almost 3,000 were identified as hate crimes. In addition -

  • Sixty-one percent of hate crime incidents were motivated by race, 4% by religion, 13% by sexual orientation, 11% by ethnicity, and 1% by victim disability.
  • Targets of hate crime were most commonly individuals (84%) as opposed to businesses or religious organizations.
  • Among victims of violent hate crime, 7% listed their attackers as relatives or friends, 38% as acquaintances and 26% as strangers.

Sexual assault among young victims

Because the National Crime Victimization Survey does not interview victims under age 12, no other multijurisdictional data were available on this subject. The NIBRS data from law enforcement agencies of 12 States covering the years 1991 through 1996 showed that --

  • Sixty-seven percent of all victims of sexual assault reported to the participating law enforcement agencies were juveniles (under the age of 18); 34% of all victims were under age 12.
  • One of every seven victims of sexual assault reported to the participating law enforcement agencies were under age 6.
  • Forty percent of the offenders in the incidents reported who victimized children under age 6 were juveniles (under the age of 18)

Kidnaping of juveniles

Kidnaping is not currently covered in major crime collections. The 1997 NIBRS data about 1,214 juvenile kidnapings from jurisdictions in 12 NIBRS-certified states showed that --

  • Kidnaping composes less than 2 percent of all violent crimes against juveniles reported to police.
  • 49 percent of juvenile kidnapings are perpetrated by family members, 27 percent by an acquaintance and 24 percent by a stranger.
  • Acquaintance kidnaping involves a comparatively high percentage of juvenile perpetrators, has the largest percentage of female and teenage victims, is more often associates with other crimes, and has the highest percentage of injured victims.

Publications

BJS publications | Other relevant publications

This list is in order of the most recent publication first. Additional titles are listed on other topical pages and a comprehensive list is contained on the BJS publications page. To see a full abstract of a publication with links to electronic versions of the publication, click on the title below.

BJS Publications

Family Violence Statistics: Including Statistics on Strangers and Acquaintances, 6/05. Compares family and nonfamily violence statistics from victimization through the different stages of the justice system. NCJ 207846

Hate Crimes Reported in NIBRS, 1997-99, 9/01. Utilizes data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting Program (NIBRS) to describe hate crimes reported to law enforcement in NIBRS-participating jurisdictions, between 1997 and 1999. NCJ 186765

Linking Uniform Crime Reporting Data to Other Datasets, 5/01. Outlines the contents and uses of the new Law Enforcement Agency Identifiers Crosswalk file. NCJ 185233

Effects of NIBRS on Crime Statistics, 7/00. Compares data from Federal Bureau of Investigation Summary Uniform Crime Reports and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for 1,131 agencies. NCJ 178890

Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement: Victim, Incident, and Offender Characteristics 7/00. Presents findings from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) regarding sexual assault, especially of young children. NCJ 182990

Bridging Gaps in Police Crime Data, 7/99. Describes the history of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system and the data problems that it deals with in reporting crime, arrests, and homicide.
Executive Summary, NCJ 177615
Full report, NCJ 176365

State Use of Incident-Based Crime Statistics. 2/99. Describes the States' publication and dissemination of incident-based data, focusing on the presentation of criminal statistics in tabular form. NCJ 173941

Crime Data Requests 1994-96: A Review of Requests for Crime Information from the State Law Enforcement Division of South Carolina. 3/98. Presents findings from the review of data requests made to the UCR Department of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to gain an improved understanding of the types of criminal data most commonly requested and to identify standard incident-based tables that could streamline SLED's provision of information. NCJ 170028

Implementing the National Incident-Based Reporting System: A Project Status Report. 8/97. Presents the recommendations developed during a project directed jointly by BJS and the FBI to identify significant impediments to participation in NIBRS by large local law enforcement agencies nationwide and promising cost-effective approaches to encourage wide adoption of NIBRS. NCJ 165581

Other relevant publications

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention:

Federal Bureau of Investigation:

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Resources for analyzing NIBRS data

Datasets and codebooks

The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD) provides a NIBRS Resource Guide which explains NIBRS concepts and file structure. Also available are an interactive SPSS code builder and the following NIBRS data:

  • National Incident-Based Reporting System, 1996, Study Number 2645
  • National Incident-Based Reporting System, 1997, Study Number 2793
  • National Incident-Based Reporting System, 1998, Study Number 3031
  • National Incident-Based Reporting System, 1999, Study Number 3207

Sample tables and code

The Justice Research and Statistics Association (JRSA) has developed an Incident-Based Reporting (IBR) Resource Center which provides example tables derived from NIBRS and SPSS and SAS code to replicate them.

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Related sites

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