2021 State Justice Statistics Program of Statistical Analysis Center

Under Core Capacity area (C) Increase access to data, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) will partner with the University of Alabama to continue its efforts to implement a statewide, centralized NIBRS-compliant repository of UCR data. This has been a multi-year effort that has caused significant delays in updating ALEA’s statistical reporting capabilities and has resulted in a gap in funding requests to the SAC program. This new repository consists of data submitted by ALEA and provides software (eCrime) and an external vendor submission system that allows both large and small agencies to externally submit, validate, and store their data in the central repository. This transition to NIBRS incident-based reporting (IBR) from all law enforcement levels in Alabama presents a significant opportunity for enhanced data analytics, reporting, and research in Alabama. Existing reporting tools and processes are built around summary information and need to be updated to handle the new IBR NIBRS data. Funds are being requested to continue the development of the backend IBR data processing engine (CRIBD) to handle the new incident-based data in Alabama. The primary objective of CRIBD is to integrate the new IBR data into the reporting channels of ALEA so that it can replace the existing summary-based reporting mechanisms that are currently in place. This project is key for the state to be able to report, analyze, and research crime data in Alabama.