In 2012, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) sought an applicant to implement the National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) project, a program designed to generate nationally-representative incident-based data on crimes reported to law enforcement agencies. NCS-X will leverage the FBI's existing National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) by recruiting a sample of 400 law enforcement agencies to supplement the existing NIBRS data by providing their incident data to their state (or the federal) NIBRS data collection program. When data from these 400 agencies are combined with data from the more than 6,000 agencies that currently report NIBRS data to the FBI, NIBRS will be able to produce national estimates of crime that can be disaggregated by victim/offender characteristics, the circumstances of the event, victim-offender relationship, and other important elements of criminal events. When completed, nationally-representative NIBRS data will increase our nation's ability to monitor, respond to, and prevent crime by allowing NIBRS to produce timely, detailed, and accurate national measures of crime incidents. Through a competitive peer review process, the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) was awarded $1,999,985 to begin conducting an assessment of the states' and selected agencies' interests and capabilities in participating in NIBRS and conducting a pilot study to develop specific cost estimates for converting the 400 selected agencies. RTI also developed a marketing plan to gather support at the federal, state and local level for this initiative and the utility of incident-based official crime data generally. In FY2013 and FY2014, RTI received supplements to expand the original pilot; to develop more precise estimates of the burden and costs of reporting data to NIBRS; and to push the project closer to implementation. The NCS-X team worked to produce cost estimates for full NCS-X implementation which was provided to BJS in March of 2015. The team has also engaged in extensive recruitment efforts with the 72 largest agencies in the NCS-X sample, including establishing and conducting meetings with high-level decision making authorities in local agencies and conducting readiness assessments of agenciesÂ’ IBR capabilities. RTI has also developed a set of readiness assessment tools for assessing the capacity of state agencies to collect NIBRS data and for assessing the capacity of local law enforcement agencies to provide incident based data to NIBRS. The team has also worked to produce marketing materials demonstrating the utility of IBR data at the national, state, and local levels.
Under this supplemental award, RTI will build on the prior work from the first phases of the project and continue to build towards implementation. Effort is focused at recruiting and assisting State UCR programs and state and local law enforcement agencies to fully implement the NCS-X program. This includes providing technical assistance to these agencies in providing NIBRS data to their state (or the federal) NIBRS data collection program.
Specifically, supplemental funding will:
1. Support efforts to design and provide high-quality training and technical assistance to state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies identified for the NCS-X sample in their transitions to NIBRS reporting;
2. Support states UCR programs and local law enforcement agencies in the development and implementation of policies, practices, and technology to facilitate the collection and submission of NIBRS data, establish collaborative partnerships across agency, discipline, and jurisdiction to promote and enable NIBRS reporting, and support the overall management and coordination of ongoing NCS-X work. (CA/NCF)
