National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)

Offenses and Data Elements Measured in the NIBRS

The NIBRS expands on the ten offense types measured in the SRS and collects incident and arrest information from law enforcement agencies for 52 total Group A offenses, as well as arrest-only information for an additional ten Group B offenses.

In addition to counts of crimes and arrests, NIBRS was designed to collect detailed information on the attributes of each crime incident known to law enforcement, including—

• the date, time, and location of the incident
• a detailed list of all offenses that occurred in the incident, not just the most serious offense
• demographic information on each victim and offender involved in the incident
• the relationships between each of the victims and the offenders
• other details of the incident, including victim injury, type of weapon involved, alcohol or drug involvement, property loss, and drugs seized
• clearance information, including both arrest and clearances by exceptional means
• date of arrest and arrestee demographics.

Population Coverage

Law enforcement agencies have been gradually moving from reporting summary statistics to the FBI to reporting to NIBRS, a shift that is reflective of a larger trend among police agencies toward collecting more detailed, incident-based case information. To spur the development of NIBRS into a nationally representative source of detailed crime statistics, in 2012 BJS spearheaded an initiative titled the National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X). NCS-X is designed to generate nationally representative, incident-based data on crimes reported to law enforcement agencies by recruiting a select sample of agencies to report NIBRS data to the FBI. In 2013, BJS and the FBI signed a joint statement of support for NCS-X and agreed to work together to expand NIBRS coverage through funding, training, and technical assistance to law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The success of NCS-X, coupled with a broader reliance on data-driven insights by law enforcement, is reflected in the overall NIBRS coverage across the U.S., which has increased each year, as more law enforcement agencies submit data to the system. For the 2021 data year, 11,818 of the 18,924 law enforcement agencies in the United States submitted at least 1 month of data to NIBRS, representing approximately 65% of the U.S. population. For the 2022 data year, 13,624 of the 18,930 agencies in the United States submitted at least 1 month of data to NIBRS, representing approximately 79% of the U.S. population. For the 2023 data year, 14,039 of the 19,196 agencies in the United States submitted at least 1 month of data to NIBRS, representing about 83% of the U.S. population.