Considerations and Cautions Regarding NIBRS Data

• DOI: 10.1177/1525107115623943
• Published date: 01 December 2015
• Author: Daniel Bibel
• Date: 01 December 2015
• Subject Matter: Commentaries

Commentary

Considerations and

Cautions Regarding

NIBRS Data: A View

From the Field

Daniel Bibel

1

A group of researchers and practitioners met at American University (AU) in February

2015 to consider both the breadth of research topics that analysis of National Incident-

Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data allows and some of the challenges that arise in

working with these data. The presentations—a selection of which are represented by the

articles in this special issue—showed the potential of NIBRS data to provide an

enhanced understanding for a variety of policy-relevant criminological research. As

researchers continue to tap into the wealth of information contained in NIBRS data, one

can hope that interesting and relevant analyses will continue to be produced. NIBRS

data, though, are not without flaws, limitations, and peculiarities that deserve some

attention. My comments focus on several of these issues and are shaped by my years

of work with the Massachusetts State Police and Massachusetts’ efforts to collect its

crime data in NIBRS format.

1

My comments concern issues arising from the develop-

ment and implementation of NIBRS, data quality overall, and data quality tied to spe-

cific aspects of incident level data. Finally, I consider ways for researchers to partner

with police agencies in ways that could benefit police as well as researchers.

NIBRS was designed and developed to eliminate many of the limitations of the

original summary reporting system of Uniform Crime Report (UCR). UCR, developed

in the 1920s and littlechanged over the years, provided the nation with a concise count

of ‘‘major crimes’’—the seven index offenses of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated

assault,burglary, larceny and motorvehicle theft. Theseseven were chosen becausethey

were consideredto be both frequent enoughin commissionand serious enough to require

counting in a national statistical program. The program is considered by some to be a

‘‘census’’ of crimes—that is, a complete count of crimes known to the police—even

1

Massachusetts State Police, Framingham, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Daniel Bibel, Massachusetts State Police (Ret), Framingham, MA 01702, USA.

Email: dbibel@verizon.net

Justice Research and Policy

2015, Vol. 16(2) 185-194

ªThe Author(s) 2015

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DOI: 10.1177/1525107115623943

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