Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2016, $2,427,140)
The National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) is an effort to expand the FBIs National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) into a nationally representative system of incident-based crime statistics. BJS and the FBI are implementing NCS-X with the support of other Department of Justice agencies, including the Office for Victims of Crime. The goal of NCS-X is to enroll a sample of 400 scientifically selected law enforcement agencies to submit data to NIBRS; when these 400 new NIBRS-reporting agencies are combined with the more than 6,300 agencies that reported to NIBRS as of 2013, the nation will have a nationally representative system of incident-based crime statistics drawn from the operational data systems of local police departments. These incident-based data will draw upon the attributes and circumstances of criminal incidents and allow for more detailed and transparent descriptions of crime in communities. The current mechanism by which local law enforcement (LE) agencies report data to the FBIs NIBRS, in general, is for local LE agencies to submit data to their state UCR reporting program, and then for the state UCR program to report those data to the FBI. While the FBI does accept NIBRS data directly from a small number of law enforcement agencies, the highly preferred route of reporting is through the state UCR program. Funding from 2016 National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) Implementation Assistance Program will help states to expand their current capacity to report incident-based crime data to the FBIs National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The plan to transition local agencies to NIBRS reporting requires enhancing the state pipeline in order to ensure that each states Uniform Crime Reporting program is capable of receiving and processing local incident-based crime data. For states that currently have no NIBRS program, the primary goal of this funding is to help them design and/or implement a NIBRS-certified incident-based reporting (IBR) program and begin reporting NIBRS data from at least one agency from the NCS-X sample. Funding will also support state programs to conduct readiness assessments with sampled agencies with the state and/or provide pass-through funding to local agencies in the NCS-X sample so that they can transition to IBR reporting.
Proposed project activities will establish IBR capability within the New Jersey State Police (NJSP), which serves as the UCR Program for the state of New Jersey. NJSP plans to eventually transition the entire state of NJ to IBR, and has proposed activities that will provide capacity at the state level to collect incident based data from local agencies and to facilitate the collection of incident based data through the establishment of a state-run RMS for use by local agencies.
Under the current project, the New Jersey State Police will establish the states ability to receive IBR data from agencies, process the data, and submit it to the FBI NIBRS. This involves the creation of a certified NIBRS program at the state level, including establishing a NIBRS data repository, developing plug and play adapters that will allow data submission from the various RMS vendors operating in the state, and establishing a technical specification for the transmission of the data from local agencies to the NJSP repository.
The project will also provide detailed information on the readiness of the 29 NCS-X sample agencies in the state to convert to IBR, resulting in cost estimates for that transition for each agency; it will also provide pass-through funding to convert the Newark PD, one of the 72 certainty stratum agencies.
(CA/NCF)