*****************************************
Implementing the national Incident-Based 
Reporting System: A Project Status Report
*****************************************

July 1997,  NCJ-165581

U.S. Department of Justice 
Bureau of Justice Statistics

Jan M. Chaiken, Ph.D. 
Director

David J. Roberts, NIBRS Project Staff Director for SEARCH, the
National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics,
wrote this report. Charles Kindermann, BJS, supervised the
grant. Tom Hester, BJS, produced the report.

This project was supported by grant number 95-BJ-CX-K021 awarded
by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice.
Points of view in this document are those of the author and do
not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the
U.S. Department of Justice.

1997 SEARCH. The National Consortium for Justice Information and
Statistics

The U.S. Department of Justice authorizes any person to
reproduce, publish, translate, or otherwise use all or any part
of the copyrighted material in this publication.

Information on the NIBRS project is available electronically
through the NIBRS Internet Web site at
http://www.nibrs.search.org

This report and other criminal justice information and
statistics are available through the BJS Web site at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/

SEARCH, the National Consortium for Justice Information and
Statistics, produced this report. SEARCH undertook the project
under a grant awarded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS),
U.S. Department of Justice, and under the joint direction of BJS
and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This project was
designed to identify the most significant impediments to NIBRS
participation in large local law enforcement agencies nationwide
and to identify promising and cost-effective approaches to
encouraging wider adoption of NIBRS. Together with BJS and the
FBI, SEARCH convened a Steering Committee to provide guidance
and direction throughout the project.

In this project, SEARCH: 
*Surveyed each State agency responsible for collecting and
reporting Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) and incident-based
reporting data--supplementing that data with information from
BJS, the FBI and the Association of State UCR Programs-to help
determine each State's NIBRS implementation status. SEARCH used
the surveys to produce detailed NIBRS State Profiles of all 50
States and the District of Columbia.

*Surveyed vendors to collect information about the capabilities
of their IBR-compatible software systems. These surveys were
used to produce NIBRS Vendor Profiles, which list detailed
product information, such as support services, product features
and references to current system users.

*Surveyed key technical staff in the 64 largest police and
sheriffs' departments in the Nation (those serving jurisdictions
of over 300,000 in population) to assess the technical capacity
of those agencies to meet the national NIBRS standards.

*Convened 5 regional "Focus Group" meetings in October 1996, at
which key policy representatives of the 64 large agencies
discussed experiences and exchanged views regarding operational
and policy impediments that, from their perspective, hinder
NIBRS implementation. The UCR/NIBRS program manager from the
agency's respective State also attended each meeting, as did
SEARCH staff, and BJS and FBI representatives. Steering
Committee members helped facilitate each of the meetings, which
were attended by representatives from a total of 28 States and
the District of Columbia. The meetings were held in Sacramento,
California; Austin, Texas; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Orlando,
Florida; and Chicago, Illinois.

*Contracted with a cost analyst to create a defensible protocol
of estimating the costs of NIBRS implementation in local
agencies and States.

The staff summarized the results of the Focus Group meetings and
drafted recommendations for presentation to the Steering
Committee at an October 29, 1996, meeting in Phoenix, Arizona.
The committee reviewed the findings and recommendations,
suggested changes, and unanimously endorsed the revised
recommendations.

The findings and recommendations were also presented to the UCR
Subcommittee of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services
Advisory Policy Board (CJIS APB) at a meeting in Austin, Texas,
on November 7, 1996. The subcommittee suggested wording changes,
ranked the recommendations in priority, and unanimously endorsed
the recommendations with the suggested changes.

The findings and recommendations, together with the
subcommittee's suggested changes, were then presented to the
full CJIS APB at their meeting in San Diego, California, on
December 12, 1996, where they were unanimously endorsed.

The revised recommendations were reaffirmed by the NIBRS Project
Steering Committee at their meeting in Washington, D.C., on
February 13, 1997.

***********************************
NIBRS Project Steering Committee
***********************************

Co-chairmen
------------

Charles M. Friel, Ph.D. Professor, Criminal Justice Center, Sam
Houston State University

Phillip J. Renninger Director, Bureau of Statistics and Policy
Research, Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency

Current members
----------------

Chief Louie Caudell Little Rock, Ark., Police Department Chair,
UCR Subcommittee, CJIS Advisory Policy Board

Melissa Winesburg President, Association of State UCR Programs
(ex-officio) CJIS Program Manager, Ohio Office of Criminal
Justice Services

Lloyd Smith Director, Oregon Law Enforcement Data System,
Department of State Police

Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Arapahoe County, Colo.

Patrick Fitzsimons Chairman Emeritus, Major City Chiefs
Association

Don M. Gottfredson, Ph.D. Rutgers University

Craig Uchida, Ph.D. Assistant Director, Community Oriented
Policing Services (COPS) program Office of Grants Administration
U.S. Department of Justice

John Firman Director of Research, International Association of
Chiefs of Police

Sheriff G.C. "Buck" Buchanan Yavapai County, Ariz.

Charles Drescher Director of Systems, Commanding Officer,
Information Resources Division, Los Angeles, Calif., Police
Department

William Rhodes, Ph.D. Abt Associates, Inc.

Charlene Cain UCR Policy Liaison/Specialist, Texas Department of
Public Safety

Carle L. Jackson State Criminal Justice Policy Advisor,
Director, Louisiana Sentencing Commission Louisiana Commission
on Law Enforcement & Administration of Criminal Justice

Chief David G. Walchak Concord, N.H., Police Department
Immediate Past President, International Association of Chiefs of
Police

1996 Steering Committee members
----------------------------------

Chief Bruce D. Glasscock Plano, Tex., Police Department
International Association of Chiefs of Police

Julie A. Allen Past President, Association of State UCR Programs
(ex-officio)

Jacqueline Cohen, Ph.D. Wilpin Gore, Ph.D. Carnegie-Mellon
University Director, Research & Statistics Program

SEARCH project staff
-----------------------

Project Director David J. Roberts Deputy Director

Staff 
Owen M. Greenspan Criminal Justice Information Services
Specialist

Julie K. Gutierrez Manager, Software Services

Seth F. Jacobs Director, Research & Statistics Program

Cost analysis contractor Michael N. Beltramo Beltramo &
Associates Los Angeles, Calif.

Agencies directing the study
-------------------------------

U.S. Department of Justice
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Jan M. Chaiken, Ph.D. Director

Charles R. Kindermann, Ph.D. Program Manager
Federal Bureau of Investigation

Bennie F. Brewer Chief, Programs Support Section, Criminal
Justice Information Services Division

Yoshio Akiyama, Ph.D. Chief, Statistical Unit, Programs Support
Section, Criminal Justice Information Services Division

Contents
---------

Preface

NIBRS Project Steering Committee 

Project overview by Charles M. Friel, Co-Chairman

Project status report 
Introduction

Background
Table: Level of UCR participation 
by States, May 14, 1997 

Implementation of NIBRS

Current status of NIBRS
State implementations 
FBI certification of State UCR/NIBRS programs 

Impediments to local agency implementation 
Survey of Local Law Enforcement Agencies 
Regional focus group meetings

Findings
Funding
Uncertainty of benefits
Policy concerns
Administrative issues
Federal and State reporting
Data elements
Education

Recommendations and endorsements

Conclusion

Final recommendations

**********************
Project overview
************************

The way we count crime in the United States is changing in
fundamental respects. We are shifting from monthly aggregate
reporting of summary crime and arrest statistics to detailed
reporting of crime and arrest activities at the incident level.

This shift in reporting practice better reflects the fundamental
nature of police recordkeeping practices, and has important
implications for police information management and operations.
Incident-based reporting promises significantly richer data
regarding the nature of crime and our response, and this should
greatly expand our analytic capabilities at the local, State,
and Federal levels.

It has been over a decade since the publication of the Blueprint
for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. As
Chairman of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Study Steering
Committee that resulted in the publication of the Blueprint, I
should note that our recommendations in that project were to
convert the Summary UCR Program to 1) a two-level reporting
program in which most agencies would report basic offense and
arrest information similar to that reported in the Summary UCR
Program, and in which only a relatively small sample of agencies
would report more extensive information, and 2) a unit-record
reporting system in which local law enforcement agencies at
either level would submit reports on each individual criminal
incident and arrest.

The National Incident-Based Reporting System Program (NIBRS)
that emerged out of the Blueprint recommendations, however, is
being implemented throughout the Nation as a single-level
reporting program with all agencies being asked to submit the
more extensive information.

Significant progress has been made in the implementation of the
NIBRS Program since publication of the data reporting
specifications by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1988.
Ten States are currently certified for reporting NIBRS data to
the FBI, and the FBI received NIBRS data from 1,550 departments
for 1996. In addition, NIBRS data from 1993 through 1995 are now
available to researchers for analysis.

Notwithstanding these advances, NIBRS implementation nationally
has been slow, particularly in larger law enforcement agencies.
At present, NIBRS reporting agencies represent approximately 5.7
percent of the United States population, and the Austin (Texas)
Police Department is the only law enforcement agency serving a
jurisdiction over 500,000 in population that is reporting NIBRS
data to the FBI. Implementation of a program of this scope is an
enormous undertaking, particularly so in that it relies so
heavily on the internal information processing and reporting
capabilities of local law enforcement agencies.

In an effort to better understand the challenges that face local
agencies in their implementation of NIBRS, BJS, in partnership
with the FBI, awarded a cooperative agreement to SEARCH, the
National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, to
undertake a comprehensive study of the impediments facing local
law enforcement agencies in NIBRS implementation, and to develop
recommendations to overcome these impediments. A steering
committee and technical working group, comprised of
representatives of the International Association of Chiefs of
Police (IACP), National Sheriffs' Association (NSA), Association
of State UCR Programs (ASUCRP), the academic and research
communities, practitioners and subject matter experts, guided
the project throughout this initial phase of work. Our primary
objectives during this first phase of the project were to
identify the most significant impediments to full NIBRS
participation, examine the most promising and cost-effective
approaches to implementing the system, and develop a reasonable
set of recommendations to specifically address those impediments.

Among our many tasks during this past 18 months, our committees
held regional meetings throughout the Nation with policy
representatives from 65 of the largest law enforcement agencies,
State UCR/NIBRS program managers, BJS, FBI and SEARCH. I am
especially pleased with the candor with which representatives
from law enforcement agencies throughout the country
participating in our meetings shared their ideas, experiences,
frustrations and successes with incident-based reporting. It
gave us true insight into the obstacles (both real and
perceived) facing agencies in their implementation of NIBRS, and
I am encouraged that those obstacles can be successfully
addressed.

I would like to extend my personal thanks to each of the
committee members who participated in this initial phase of the
project. As co-chairman of the NIBRS project steering committee,
it has been my distinct pleasure to work with representatives of
the BJS, FBI, IACP, NSA, Major City Chiefs Association, Criminal
Justice Information Services Division Advisory Policy Board, and
ASUCRP, and the practitioners and sub-ject matter experts who
generously gave their time and knowledge in guiding this
project. Thanks also are due to the SEARCH staff, who
coordinated the work of the committees, organized and
facilitated the regional meetings, and drafted the project
reports.

This report presents our findings regarding the impediments to
NIBRS implementation in major law enforcement agencies
throughout the country, and proposes recommendations that we
feel will successfully address the challenges faced by agencies
in their move to implement incident-based reporting. During the
past 18 months, we have made significant progress in
understanding these challenges facing local law enforcement
agencies in their implementation of NIBRS and in developing a
course of action to address these impediments. I look forward to
the coming 18 months and our plans to put our recommendations
into action. The BJS, FBI, and SEARCH have committed to
continuing work in this area and will now move onto the next
phase of the project.

Dr. Charles M. Friel Co-Chair, NIBRS Project Steering Committee

***********************
Project status report
***********************

Introduction
-------------

In 1995 the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), United States
Department of Justice, awarded a co-operative agreement to
SEARCH, the National Consortium for Justice Information and
Statistics, to identify impediments to National Incident-based
Reporting System program (NIBRS) implementation among large law
enforcement agencies. This project, which is under the joint
direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and BJS,
is guided by a Steering Committee.

The NIBRS Project Steering Committee is comprised of
representatives of the International Association of Chiefs of
Police (IACP), National Sheriffs' Association (NSA), Major City
Chiefs Association, the Association of State Uniform Crime
Reporting Programs (ASUCRP), the FBI's Criminal Justice
Information Services Division Advisory Policy Board (CJIS APB),
and the research community. Dr. Charles M. Friel, Professor, Sam
Houston State University, and Phillip J. Renninger, Director,
Bureau of Statistics and Policy Research, Pennsylvania
Commission on Crime and Delinquency, cochair the NIBRS Project
Steering Committee.

The primary focus of this initial phase of research was the
identification of impediments that hinder NIBRS implementation
at the local level, particularly among larger law enforcement
agencies. Data collection strategies included surveys of State
UCR/ NIBRS agencies, developers of NIBRS compatible software
applications and larger law enforcement agencies. In addition,
regional focus group meetings were organized, which brought
together local, State and Federal agency practitioners and
subject matter experts for candid discussions regarding the
nature of impediments and recommendations.

This report presents the principal findings of the initial phase
of research, and includes recommendations for action that have
been unanimously endorsed by the Steering Committee, the UCR
Subcommittee of the CJIS APB, and the full CJIS APB.(David J.
Roberts, NIBRS Project Staff Director, SEARCH, prepared this
report.) SEARCH, in concert with BJS and the FBI, will be
undertaking activities in the coming 18 months to implement the
recommendations, and other projects will be initiated through
BJS and the FBI.

Background
------------

The Uniform Crime Reporting program (UCR) is the Nation's
primary source of information about crime and arrest activities
of local law enforcement agencies. From its initiation by the
IACP in 1929 until the mid-1980's, the scope of the UCR program
remained largely unchanged, although the scale of operations has
increased. Today, more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies,
representing over 97% of the Nation's population, contribute
data to the FBI either directly or through State UCR
programs.(FBI, Crime in the United States, 1995 Uniform Crime
Reports (Washington, D.C.: FBI, 1996).  While the program has
remained true to its origins as a measure of the incidence of
crime and the performance of the local law enforcement agencies,
it has also become a significant social indicator used in
planning and program evaluation, and is broadly relied upon by
the general public as an indicator of community safety.

As an aggregate reporting program, the summary UCR program
produces counts of specific types of offenses, but is incapable
of permitting the examination of complex relationships among
characteristics of criminal events. Moreover, as a consequence
of its aggregate reporting structure, there is no process by
which an offense can be linked to its associated arrest, so that
offense clearance information is not linked to information about
arrestees. In the Summary UCR Program, detailed offense
information is collected only on the eight Index offenses(The
initial Crime Index consisted of murder and nonnegligent
manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault,
burglary, larceny-theft of $50 and over, and motor vehicle
theft. An eighth offense, arson, was added to the Index by
congressional mandate in 1979.)and even among these offenses,
reporting provisions of the summary UCR program mask or obscure
a potentially substantial volume of crime through the
"hierarchy rule" and the "hotel rule."(See FBI, Uniform Crime
Reporting Handbook (Washington, D.C.: FBI, 1991).

In 1982 BJS and the FBI funded a three-phased UCR redesign
effort that ultimately yielded a new philosophy and revised
specifications for data gathering.(In 1982 BJS provided funding
to Abt Associates for an examination of the UCR program, its
history, objectives, data elements, and relationships with other
systems. See E. Poggio, S. Kennedy, J. Chaiken, and K. Carlson,
Blue-print for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting
Program: Final Report of the UCR Study (Washington, D.C.: BJS,
May 1985), hereafter referred to as the Blueprint. In 1984 the
FBI began the second phase, the goal of which was to identify
available options and recommend changes. In 1988 the FBI's third
phase produced specifications for data collection and submission
and system implementation.) NIBRS moves beyond aggregate
statistics and raw counts of crimes and arrests that comprise
the summary UCR program, to individual records for each reported
crime incident and its associated arrest. NIBRS looks at
detailed offense, offender, victim, property, and arrest data.

In addition to changing the fundamental reporting structure
underlying crime and arrest information, NIBRS collects offense
and arrest data on 22 crime categories, spanning 46 offenses (as
compared to the 8 UCR Index offenses), and additional offenses
for which only arrest information is reported. More-over, NIBRS
eliminates the need for the "hierarchy rule" (because multiple
types of crimes can be reported within a single incident) and
collects an expanded array of attributes involved in the
commission of offenses, including whether the offender is
suspected of using alcohol, drugs or narcotics, and/or a
computer in the commission of the offense, and whether the
arrestee was armed with a weapon.

The original BJS-funded study, which produced the Blueprint for
the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, recommended a
two-tiered implementation strategy for NIBRS nationally.(See
Blueprint, pp. 43-48). This strategy contemplated that only a
sample of perhaps 3% to 7% of law enforcement agencies
nationwide would report comprehensive incident-based data,
consistent with the reporting requirements of today's NIBRS,
then called "Level II reporting." The remaining 93% to 97% of
law enforcement agencies would report incident-based data, but
in a much more abbreviated format, focusing on Part I offenses
only with a limited range of victim, offender, and more detailed
incident data. This would be "Level I reporting." Arrest data
for both Part I and Part II crimes were to have been captured in
both levels, with linkages to cleared offenses. In spite of
these recommendations, the law enforcement community elected
full NIBRS implementation, effectively endorsing Level II
reporting for every agency.

Although it has been a full decade since publication of the
Blueprint recommending incident-based reporting, less than 6% of
the U.S. population is represented by NIBRS contributing
agencies. While considerable progress has been made in many
States, and the program has been implemented in numerous small
and medium-sized law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation,
Austin, Texas, is the only "major" department (that is, one
serving a jurisdiction of over 500,000 in population) that
initiated reporting NIBRS data to the FBI. The SEARCH project is
designed to identify impediments to NIBRS reporting among larger
local law enforcement agencies, and to recommend strategies to
overcome or counteract these impediments.

************************
Implementation of NIBRS
*************************

Following publication of the Blueprint, the FBI embarked on the
development of NIBRS data reporting standards and requirements.
In developing the reporting specifications, the FBI worked
closely with contributors at both the local and State levels, as
well as with a broad constituency of users and consumers of the
data.(In addition to State and local law enforcement agency
contributors, Federal law enforcement agencies also are
implementing NIBRS reporting, referred to as the Federal
Incident-Based Reporting System, FIBRS. See the table for
current status of FIBRS implementation. The focus of this
report, however, is State and local agency implementation of
NIBRS and, accordingly, little attention is paid to the status
of Federal agency implementation). The complete standards were
published in 1988 and 1992 by the FBI and are available in both
paper form and electronically via the Internet.(See FBI,
National Incident-Based Reporting System: Volume 1, Data
Collection Guidelines (Washington, D.C.: FBI, September 1996);
National Incident-Based Reporting System: Volume 2, Data
Submission Specifications (Washington, D.C.: FBI, May 1992);
National Incident-Based Reporting System: Volume 3, Approaches
to Implementing an Incident-Based Reporting (IBR) System
(Washington, D.C.: FBI, July 1, 1992); National Incident-Based
Reporting System: Volume 4, Error Message Manual (Washington,
D.C.: FBI, May 1992); and Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook,
NIBRS Edition (Washington, D.C.: FBI, 1992). These publications
are available as portable electronic documents (PDF files) at
http://www.nibrs.search.org).

****************************************************************

Table definitions
------------------

The FBI provides the following definitions for terms used to
describe NIBRS status:

Certified--NIBRS data are accepted by the FBI.

Testing--Various agencies within a State are submitting test
data to the FBI.

Plans to test--Agency or State has employed a consulting firm to
design software or is conducting inter-state testing of data.

Developmental--Agency or State is in the process of designing
and implementing various levels of data collection.

No formal plan--Agency or State has indicated that there is no
formal plan and/or no current interest in participating in NIBRS.

***************************************************************

In the years immediately following publication of the Blueprint
and the NIBRS reporting standards, BJS has assisted State
agencies in planning and implementing NIBRS at the State and
local levels through a series of grants, and through conferences
and publications highlighting the value of incident-based
reporting (IBR) data for a variety of analyses.(Approximately
$12 million were awarded by BJS to State UCR/NIBRS programs to
facilitate the planning and implementation of NIBRS systems at
the State level. Also, see W. Spelman, Beyond Bean Counting: New
Approaches for Managing Crime Data (Washington, D.C.: Police
Executive Research Forum, January 1988); K. Coyle, J. Schaaf,
and J. Coldren, Jr. Futures in Crime Analysis: Exploring
Applications of Incident-based Crime Data (Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Department of Justice, January 1991, NCJ-127201); D.
Roberts and S. Jacobs, Demonstrating the Operational Utility of
Incident-Based Data for Local Crime Analysis: Reporting Systems
in Tacoma, Washington, and New Bedford, Massachusetts
(Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, June 1994,
NCJ-145860); and JRSA, Domestic and Sexual Violence Data
Collection: A Report to Congress under the Violence Against
Women Act (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, July
1996, NCJ-161405).

**************************
Current status of NIBRS
****************************

NIBRS implementation at the national level relies heavily on the
State UCR/NIBRS programs that define the reporting requirements
in nearly every State. The State UCR/NIBRS programs operate as
the central data collection points within their respective
States, typically providing training and technical assistance to
local agencies, while compiling statistics on crime and arrests
for analysis at the State level.

**************************************
State implementations of NIBRS
*************************************

Most State programs have expanded the reporting requirements for
incident-based reporting within their States beyond the
requirements for the NIBRS program, often in response to, or in
anticipation of, the growing mandate for additional information
by State legislatures on such topics as domestic violence and
bias motivation.

States vary widely in the range of additional data they have
incorporated into their IBR programs. Some have stayed with the
53 data elements required by NIBRS and have added few, if any,
additional data elements, while others have incorporated as many
as 75 additional data elements. These changes reflect the
different approaches States have taken in their implementation
of NIBRS.

In most jurisdictions, IBR or NIBRS reporting is designed as a
statistical reporting program with few, if any, operational
configurations. The systems are not designed to serve as
information systems that support local agency operations, but
rather to serve as a repository of statistical data for analysis
at the State level, and in some cases at the regional and/or
local levels. In Oregon, however, IBR is being implemented as
part of a statewide operational law enforcement system that will
provide investigative leads to local law enforcement agencies.
Accordingly, the State has added 75 data elements beyond the
NIBRS reporting requirements to meet the needs of State and
local agencies.

In the SEARCH project, State UCR/ NIBRS programs were surveyed
to--
a) assess the current status of IBR implementation within the
State

b) identify what enhancements, if any, they had incorporated
into their State IBR requirements

c) determine the status of IBR implementation among large law
enforcement agencies (those serving jurisdictions over 250,000
in population)

d) identify software developers that have been certified, either
directly or indirectly, by the State programs.(The surveys were
administered by SEARCH and the data were shared with the
Association of State UCR Programs, which in turn shared data
from a separate survey they conducted of their membership. With
regard to the State certification of IBR-compatible software,
most States do not certify vendor applications directly, since
accurate submission of IBR data is so dependent on proper data
entry and case processing. Instead, States typically certify
individual law enforcement contributors once they have
demonstrated a consistent ability to report error-free data in
an acceptable format. Nevertheless, the State UCR/NIBRS programs
are generally familiar with the software applications that
contributing agencies are using and can provide some assistance
to local agencies in identifying applications that are used by
other certified agencies). 

From these surveys, profiles were created summarizing the status
of IBR implementation in each State.(SEARCH, NIBRS Project Staff
Report 1: Report on State Incident-Based Reporting Profiles and
Certified Software Applications (Sacramento, Calif.: SEARCH, the
National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics,
February 1997). Available electronically as a PDF file at--
http://www.nibrs.search.org)  Given the central role that State
programs play in submitting NIBRS data to the FBI, it was
critical that the structure and content of IBR requirements at
the State level be understood, since these requirements often
differ from the national program.

The State profiles reveal the nature and extent to which the
State programs have expanded IBR requirements beyond NIBRS. The
profiles present a description of the State IBR requirements
compared to NIBRS, including the specific additional data
elements by segment that are required for State IBR reporting.
The profiles also identify the status of IBR implementation
among local law enforcement agencies statewide, with particular
focus on large jurisdictions (those serving jurisdictions over
250,000 in population), as well as the developers of software
applications that have been certified. The developers of
software applications who provide software to the local law
enforcement agencies that have achieved certification were also
surveyed, and these data are available in the same report.

******************************
FBI certification of State 
UCR/NIBRS programs
*******************************

To begin regular submission of NIBRS data to the FBI, the State
UCR/NIBRS program must be certified by the FBI. The FBI has
developed a State certification policy that evaluates State
submissions on the following criteria: a) error rate, which
requires that fewer than 4% of the incident reports submitted by
the State be in error for 3 consecutive months;

b) statistical reasonableness, which evaluates the
reasonableness of the data based on analyses of trends, volumes,
and monthly fluctuations;

c) updating capability and responsiveness, which refers to the
ability of the State program to update its window records, meet
deadlines, and respond in a timely manner to error messages from
the national program; and

d) system appropriateness, which refers to the "systemic
compatibility of a prospective State NIBRS program with the
[national] NIBRS guidelines."(FBI, "NIBRS State Certification
Policy" (Washington, D.C.: FBI, no date).

Once the State has become certified, it can regularly report
NIBRS data directly to the FBI. Although the State is certified,
that does not necessarily mean that every law enforcement agency
within the State is reporting IBR/NIBRS data; rather, it means
that the State program is capable of processing NIBRS data at
the State level and submitting a tape of virtually error-free
data to the FBI in an acceptable format.

Ten States are currently NIBRS certified, while an additional 24
States are in the testing phase with the FBI.

***********************
Impediments to local 
agency implementation
************************

In an effort to understand impediments to NIBRS reporting that
directly face large local law enforcement agencies throughout
the Nation, project staff under-took a two-part data collection
effort. In the first stage, a detailed survey was mailed to each
of the 64 largest local law enforcement agencies (those serving 
jurisdictions over 300,000 in population); 61 agencies, 95.3%,
responded. The objective of the survey was to assess the
technical capacity of the agencies to report incident-based
offense and arrest data in a format consistent with NIBRS. The
survey covered basic NIBRS definitions and data structure
issues, as well as detailed information regarding the agencies'
present ability to capture and report each of the 53 NIBRS data
elements.

In the second stage, policy representatives from each of these
64 agencies were invited to attend regional focus groups hosted
by SEARCH for a day and a half during October 1996 in 5
locations to dis-cuss real and perceived impediments to NIBRS
implementation. In addition to local agency representatives, a
representative from the respective State UCR/NIBRS program was
invited to participate in the meetings. The meetings were
facilitated by representatives of the NIBRS Project Steering
Committee and SEARCH project staff, and attended by
representatives of BJS and the FBI.13 

The focus group meetings were designed to give local agencies an
opportunity to discuss their concerns and perceptions regarding
NIBRS implementation, and allowed the FBI and the State
UCR/NIBRS programs to discuss the current status of the programs
and to correct misperceptions when raised.

************************
Survey of local law 
enforcement agencies
*************************

Survey findings indicate that two-thirds of the largest agencies
comply with the acting-in-concert principle and are able to link
arrests to incident reports, both of which are required
procedures for NIBRS reporting.(In NIBRS, an "incident" is
defined as one or more offenses committed by the same offender
or group of offenders acting in concert at the same time and
place. Acting in concert requires that the offenders actually
commit or assist in the commission of the crime(s). This is
important because all of the offenders in an incident are
considered to have committed all of the offenses in the
incident). Conversely, less than a third (29.5%) of respondents
indicate that they follow NIBRS and collect information on all
crimes involved in an incident, while over two-thirds (70.5%)
continue to follow the "hierarchy rule" and record only the most
serious crime within an incident.(See FBI, Uniform Crime
Reporting Handbook (Washington, DC: FBI, 1984), pp.33-34, for a
discussion of the "hierarchy rule."). The survey findings also
indicate that while most of the mandatory data elements for
NIBRS reporting are captured specifically in the local agency
records management systems, they are often not in full
compliance with NIBRS reporting; that is, the agency may capture
the same or similarly named variable as used in NIBRS, but it is
not coded to be consistent with NIBRS.

******************************
Regional focus group meetings
******************************

Regional focus group meetings were organized during the first
half of October 1996 in Sacramento, California; Austin, Texas;
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Orlando, Florida; and Chicago,
Illinois. A key policy representative from each of the major
local law enforcement agencies across the Nation was invited to
participate in the day-and-a-half meeting. The meeting focused
on identifying the operational impediments that have hindered
local agency participation in NIBRS. Since most States have an
IBR program in place to report NIBRS data to the FBI, or are
active in development or testing of such a program, the State
UCR/NIBRS program directors were also invited to participate in
the respective meetings in which the affiliate local agencies
participated.

The focus groups were organized to--
a) give participants an
overview of the NIBRS program from the national perspective,

b) discuss the uses of crime and incident data in law
enforcement agencies,

c) review the status of NIBRS implementation at the State and
local level throughout the Nation, and

d) identify the key impediments that hinder or preclude local
law enforcement agencies from participating in the program.

Following general plenary session discussion of the nature of
impediments facing local agencies, the focus group split into
two working groups to further refine and prioritize the
impediments. Participants were asked to review and comment on
the impediments identified by the two working groups, and to
recommend actions to overcome or otherwise address the
impediments identified.

*********
Findings
********

Most States that have implemented NIBRS have added data elements
or edits to the national reporting standards published by the
FBI. In some cases these are relatively minor with little impact
on local agencies. In other jurisdictions, however, the changes
are substantial with considerable potential impact on local
agencies. Although many States that require significant
additional data beyond what is required for NIBRS participation
have made many of these data optional for reporting purposes,
the potential effect this may have on local law enforcement
participation is nevertheless a concern.

Many local law enforcement agencies have existing records
management systems (RMS) that are unable to report NIBRS data,
either because the data are in an incompatible format (for
example, they continue to follow the hierarchy rule and fail to
capture multiple offenses and victims), or they do not capture
sufficient mandatory data elements or code the data in a
NIBRS-compliant manner. Some of the local agencies have
antiquated systems that are fragmented and urgently in need of
upgrade or replacement simply to do their job effectively. In
contrast, others have automated incident-based systems that
effectively meet their agency's operational needs but fail to
capture the necessary data in an appropriate format for NIBRS
reporting.

There was a considerable degree of consensus among participants
of the five regional focus group meetings regarding the nature
and priority of impediments to NIBRS reporting. The general
categories of the impediments collectively identified in the
focus groups were (in priority order):

1. Funding 
2. Uncertainty of benefits 
3. Policy concerns 
4. Administrative issues 
5. Federal and State reporting 
6. Data elements 
7. Education

Each of these impediments is discussed below in greater detail,
followed by references to specific recommendations for action.

********
Funding
********

There is a general and widespread perception that implementing
NIBRS is very costly for local law enforcement agencies. The
costs pertain to forms redesign, developing or acquiring new or
upgrading existing hardware and software, upgrading legacy
information or records management systems to fourth-generation
language relational databases, implementing automated
incident-based reporting at the street level, reprogramming
existing records systems to capture and report NIBRS-compliant
data, and upgrading the communications infrastructure necessary
to support IBR reporting.

In addition, there is a broad perception that implementing NIBRS
will mean that agencies must have a significantly larger data
entry staff to accommodate the additional data that will be
captured for incident-based reporting. In a similar vein, local
agencies anticipate the need to exercise more comprehensive
quality control on the data that are entered, significant
increases in the volume and complexity of training needed both
initially and on an ongoing basis, and substantive increases in
the data processing support staff to enable automated reporting
of NIBRS-compliant data. Assessing the costs of NIBRS
implementation for local law enforcement agencies is a complex
task. A separate staff report identifies the cost factors
associated with NIBRS implementation, and additional research is
planned in order to estimate with greater specificity
implementation costs for a variety of scenarios.(SEARCH, the
National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics,
NIBRS Project Staff Report 3: Cost Issues of Implementing the
National Incident-Based Reporting System in Local Law
Enforcement Agencies (Sacramento, Calif.: SEARCH, February 1997).

The focus group participants expressed concern that NIBRS is not
perceived as a funding priority among key decision makers and
stakeholders in the local community. Policymakers, it was
believed, are more willing to support "visible" solutions, such
as additional officers, more cars, or more powerful weapons.
Representatives of several large agencies also expressed concern
that since NIBRS participation is entirely voluntary and there
is no tangible incentive at the local level to move to NIBRS,
agencies lack leverage with mayors, city councils, county
commissioners, and other key decisionmakers to commit the
necessary funds to enable the move to NIBRS. Agency
representatives were careful to explain, however, that they were
not suggesting a tactical change to mandate NIBRS reporting by
local agencies; they were simply commenting that a tangible
incentive to reporting can also be used as leverage to obtain
the necessary resources.

Reference Recommendation(s): 20.
------------------------

************************
Uncertainty of benefits
************************

There was considerable discussion at each of the regional focus
group meetings that no clear operational value has been
demonstrated for reporting of NIBRS data at the local, State, or
Federal levels. Absent such a demonstration, participants felt
that NIBRS is of more value to researchers than to law
enforcement agencies, and had a general concern that NIBRS is
only of value in macro level analyses. Participants consistently
expressed an interest in understanding the potential value of
incident-based offense and arrest data at the local level,
beyond what use is currently made for general crime analysis,
and expressed interest in knowing the kinds of analyses that
will be conducted at State and Federal levels.

Participants also suggested the development of prototype reports
to demonstrate the utility of IBR data at the local, State, and
Federal levels; the operational value of IBR systems generally
to local agencies; and how the data will and should be used for
analysis at the State and Federal levels. There was general
concern that key decision makers within and outside of the local
department must understand the benefits of NIBRS participation
if the agency is to report the data.

Reference Recommendation(s): 1, 2, and 7.
-----------------------------

*****************
Policy concerns
*****************

There is a widespread perception that reported crime will
increase with the adoption of NIBRS, largely as a result of the
elimination of the hierarchy rule, and this represents a
potential public relations disaster for local law enforcement
agencies and government officials. Although there is anecdotal
evidence from some sites that have implemented NIBRS and
experienced large increases in certain crimes, these increases
are typically an artifact of past reporting inaccuracies. Since
NIBRS captures detailed incident-based data and incorporates
extensive data quality edits, inaccurate past reporting
practices or offense misclassifications are quickly highlighted
and corrected. Law enforcement officials are very concerned that
crime will appear to increase if they implement NIBRS if for no
other reason that NIBRS allows the reporting of multiple
offenses within an incident, which was generally not the case
under the Summary UCR Program.(The "hierarchy rule" of the UCR
program generally limited the reporting of offenses to the
single more serious offense in a series of offenses. For person
offenses, however, one offense was scored for each person
victim, regardless of the number of victims. Nevertheless, if
multiple person offenses are committed against a single
individual, only the most serious of those offenses will be
reported in UCR. FBI, Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook
(Washington, D.C.: FBI, 1984) pp.33-34).

Agencies also expressed concern that no definitive policies have
been adopted at the State and Federal levels regarding the
presentation of comparative UCR and NIBRS data. FBI
representatives repeatedly stated throughout the course of the
regional focus group meetings that the agency will not compare
UCR crime incidence figures with NIBRS data, since the programs
differ so dramatically, and representatives of the State
UCR/NIBRS programs expressed similar sentiments.

Reference Recommendation(s): 3, 4, 5, 7, and 15.
------------------------------------------

***********************
Administrative issues
***********************

Law enforcement administrators are concerned that the detailed,
incident-level reporting required for NIBRS participation will
require street officers to spend substantial additional time
completing incident reports rather than responding to the needs
of the public. This potential loss of patrol time looms as a
major impediment to some large law enforcement agencies that
already face an overwhelming demand for priority services.
Agency representatives attending the regional focus groups
discussed a range of data collection strategies that have proven
successful in implementing incident-based reporting and have
actually reduced the reporting time for the officer on the
street. These strategies include the use of forced-choice
incident report forms, reengineering to eliminate duplicate data
entry, and the growing adoption of laptops and other portable
computers. Administrators were also concerned about the level of
training that will be required for NIBRS participation, and the
technical support that is necessary for ongoing operations.

Under UCR, local agencies submit monthly aggregate figures
summarizing the crime and arrest activities of their
jurisdiction. Agency representatives expressed concern that with
NIBRS, local agencies submit detailed incident-level data which
are then compiled at the State and Federal levels. Local
agencies do not, as a consequence, generally know the results of
the State compilations until they are published or otherwise
released, and this may put the agency in the difficult position
of explaining a shift in crime without sufficient information.

Reference Recommendation(s): 5, 16, 17, 18, and 19.
------------------------------------------

*****************************
Federal and State reporting
*****************************

Focus group participants raised questions about the current
status of the NIBRS program itself and whether the FBI continues
to support this national statistical reporting program. This
concern coincided with remarks that the program has not been
effectively marketed or the benefits sufficiently explained, and
that too much emphasis has been placed on coordination at the
State program level without adequate education at the local
level. Participants expressed concern about the perceived "all
or nothing" policy for NIBRS participation, which for local
agencies meant that if they could not meet every NIBRS reporting
element, they would not be allowed to participate in the
program. Those attending the meetings argued for greater
flexibility as a way of encouraging broader implementation, and
the FBI indicated its willingness to work with agencies in this
regard.

Participants also discussed the burden local agencies often face
in meeting the reporting requirements of State programs, which
have often expanded the State reporting requirements well beyond
NIBRS. Once again, participants questioned the nature and
utility of reports from the State level, particularly given the
costs associated with the expanded data collection.

Reference Recommendation(s): 8, 9, and 11.
------------------------------------

**************
Data elements
**************

Police chiefs, sheriffs, street officers and data processing
personnel provided an array of comments about the structure and
definition of specific NIBRS data elements. Some elements, such
as the victim-offender relationship, multiple offenses and
multiple victims, were characterized as lacking investigative
value. Others were viewed as being largely subjective (for
example, bias motivation and victim ethnicity). The residential
status of an arrestee and the nature of suspected substance
abuse were seen as being largely irrelevant to the police
mission. Participants were also troubled by differences in
definitions between UCR, NIBRS, State statutes, and definitions
used for the National Crime Information Center (NCIC).

Reference Recommendation(s): 6 and 8.
--------------------------------

**********
Education
**********

There was strong agreement among focus group participants that
key agency decision makers and stakeholders do not have
sufficient or accurate information regarding the nature and
objectives of NIBRS. Participants suggested that extensive
education is needed to demonstrate the utility of NIBRS for
justice agencies at the State and local levels, as well as to
address questions that agencies throughout the Nation have
regarding this program. The program of education should focus on
law enforcement agencies, but also on the media, legislative
bodies, the business community, and the general public.

Reference Recommendation(s): 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14.
--------------------------------------

*********************************
Recommendations and endorsements
*********************************

Following the regional focus group meetings, SEARCH project
staff organized a meeting of the NIBRS Project Steering
Committee on October 29, 1996, in Phoenix, Arizona. Staff
summarized the findings of the surveys and the regional focus
group meetings, and drafted a series of recommendations for
consideration. The steering committee reviewed the
recommendations, revising them where necessary, and unanimously
endorsed them.

The committee's recommendations were presented to the Uniform
Crime Reporting Subcommittee of the CJIS APB at their meeting on
November 7, 1996, in Austin, Texas. The UCR subcommittee
suggested two wording changes and unanimously endorsed the
recommendations. The subcommittee also conducted a straw poll
ranking of the top five recommendations.

The revised recommendations were subsequently presented to the
full CJIS APB at their meeting in San Diego, California, on
December 10, 1996. The CJIS APB unanimously endorsed the
recommendations and the priority ranking suggested by the UCR
Subcommittee. The recommendations were unanimously reaffirmed by
the NIBRS Project Steering Committee on February 13, 1997, in
Washington, D.C., and will serve as the basis for continued
project activities in the coming year. text of the
recommendations.)

***********
Conclusion
************

Since as early as 1985, the Nation has been moving toward
incident-based reporting of crime and arrest data. This marks a
significant shift in the manner in which law enforcement data
are collected, the level of detail captured, and the research
potential of the underlying data. Rather than simply forwarding
monthly tallies for a handful of offenses, with incident-based
reporting local law enforcement agencies are expected to collect
and transmit comprehensive data on an expanded array of criminal
activities.

To date, however, NIBRS contributing agencies represent only
approximately 6% of the U.S. population. Although considerable
progress in NIBRS participation has been made in many States and
local agencies throughout the Nation, Austin, Texas, is the only
major department (one serving a jurisdiction over 500,000 in
population) currently reporting NIBRS data.

This project was designed to identify impediments that face
large agencies in their implementation of NIBRS, and to
recommend strategies to overcome these limitations. Several
general observations will demonstrate the impediments identified
by local agency representatives during the regional focus group
meetings, and in other forums.

From the perspective of the local contributor, a fundamental
principle underlying the logic of the NIBRS system is that NIBRS
is a statistical derivative of operational law enforcement
recordkeeping systems. NIBRS captures data in an incident-based
format, which mirrors the conceptual structure of law
enforcement activities and recordkeeping programs. Moreover, it
is designed to capture data that are essential to the crime
reporting and investigative processes of local police and
sheriff's departments.

The NIBRS program itself, however, and the many State
implementations of NIBRS, enforce a reporting structure and data
element coding scheme that exceed the ability of the legacy
records systems currently in place in many of the larger law
enforcement agencies throughout the Nation. Many small and
medium-sized law enforcement agencies have adopted automation
more recently than the large departments. In doing so, they have
implemented applications that are more flexible, but they have
less invested in the technology; consequently, they can adopt
new applications that are NIBRS-compliant more readily and
without the significant costs that face large departments.

As noted earlier, many local law enforcement agencies have
records management systems that are incapable of reporting NIBRS
data because the data are in an incompatible format (as, for
example, following the hierarchy rule and failing to capture
multiple offenses and victims). Some of these local agencies
have antiquated, fragmented records systems urgently in need of
upgrade or replacement to meet effectively the department's
needs. In these agencies the priority is on upgrading the
records management systems to meet operational responsibilities,
and IBR reporting for State or Federal statistical purposes is
viewed as a secondary priority.

In all likelihood, NIBRS implementation in these agencies will
occur only in the context of a comprehensive systems upgrade,
where NIBRS (or State IBR) reporting requirements can be built
into the agency's functional requirements definition. Clearly
the agency must also address forms redesign and training issues,
but the basic information system will enable NIBRS reporting.

In contrast, other agencies currently have automated,
incident-based systems that effectively meet their operational
needs, but fail to capture the necessary data in an appropriate
format for NIBRS reporting. In these agencies, NIBRS represents
changing their recordkeeping systems in order to generate
statistical data for use at State and Federal levels, without
any perceived benefit at the local level. For these agencies,
the costs of implementing changes in reporting practices to make
their systems NIBRS-compliant (for example, revising offense
reporting forms, department-wide training, and software
reprogramming), compounded by concerns over the impact NIBRS
will have on the department's reported crime rate and a lack of
understanding on how the data will be used at State and Federal
levels, create formidable impediments to NIBRS implementation.

If NIBRS is to be implemented broadly, its purpose must be
relevant to the operational records management systems of the
local law enforcement agencies responsible for contributing the
data, and it must demonstrate utility in State and Federal
analyses of the data. In addition, it must not represent an
undue burden on the law enforcement officers who capture the
data at the street level. Technologies that assist in the
collection and recording of incident data should be encouraged
and funding assistance should be made available to law
enforcement agencies to facilitate their adoption of
NIBRS-compliant systems.

***********************************
Final recommendations of the NIBRS 
Project Steering Committee
***********************************

The development of standard analytic methodologies
------------------------------------

1.Demonstrate how NIBRS data can and will be used in Federal and
State reports and analyses. Develop report protocols and
analytic methodologies that demonstrate the use and value of the
data.

2.Demonstrate how local agencies can or are using NIBRS and
NIBRS-like data at the local level, for crime analysis,
management and administrative reporting, resource allocation,
etc.

3.Undertake research to demonstrate, from the experiences of
other jurisdictions, the existence and nature of any changes in
the volume of reported crime under NIBRS, contrasting UCR
reporting practices.

4.Develop conversion formats that assist local agencies in
converting their incident-based data into UCR reports and
statistical summaries.

Data elements, software, and data input strategies
----------------------------------

5.Undertake research that will assess the impact of various data
input strategies for offense/ incident reports.

6.Clarify the relationship of the coding of data elements
between NIBRS and NCIC, especially the extent to which there is,
or could be, consistency between these two.

7.Document the experience of local law enforcement agencies that
have implemented incident-based manual and automated records in
which not all of the data elements or report sections must be
completed for each and every offense or incident.

8.Develop details of reconciliation of key elements, codes, and
reporting requirements for NIBRS participation to determine
whether some of the current mandatory data elements and/or
reporting requirements could be made optional as a means of
bringing additional agencies into the NIBRS program.

Communication, benefits, coordination, 
and developing momentum
--------------------------------------

9.Provide better communication between FBI, State programs and
locals.

10.Provide basic education regarding the nature of NIBRS for
local programs.

11.Continue hosting regional workshops for State and local
programs assessing the status of the programs and giving them an
opportunity to exchange information regarding the uses of the
data and how agencies have implemented the program. Involve key
technical and policy people from major departments, as well as
smaller agencies and State program representatives.

12.Profile jurisdictions that have successfully implemented
NIBRS.

13.Publish reports and undertake other publicity initiatives
that focus on NIBRS and IBR systems generally, and how they have
and are being used by police departments, FBI and State
programs. In addition to publications, also meet with chiefs and
sheriffs at State Association meetings.

14.Produce a videotape to demonstrate new and emerging
technologies associated with law enforcement record management
systems (RMS), the benefits of new generation RMS systems, and
highlight the use of NIBRS data and police information systems.

15.Undertake research that will help law enforcement
administrators understand and explain changes in reported levels
of crime that can be anticipated when converting from summary
UCR to NIBRS reporting.

Technical assistance to local agencies 
in RMS upgrades and NIBRS implementation
------------------------------------------

16.Provide assistance to local departments in the development of
RFPs for RMS and NIBRS systems.

17.Provide technical assistance with local departments in their
transition to and adoption of IBR systems.

18.Create and maintain a database of RFPs/RFIs for local law
enforcement RMS.

19.Develop a formal methodology for analyzing records systems to
assist police departments and create a mechanism to share this
methodology and to provide peer consulting.

Funding
---------

20.Seek Congressional support to:

a) Assist local agencies in their efforts to redesign and
upgrade their RMS and incorporate NIBRS reporting; 
b) Provide assistance to State programs for additional staffing
to analyze IBR data once captured from local law enforcement
agencies; 
c) Assist local agencies in initial planning for
systems upgrades, data conversion, purchase of equipment,
development or purchase of records management systems that are
IBR compliant, etc.; 
d) Assist in the redesign of forms, software development, etc.; 
e) Assist States without a NIBRS/IBR program in the development
and implementation of IBR standards; and 
f) Identify and support NIBRS pilot projects currently in
existence; in areas with no pilot projects, one should be
established and funded.

Source of the recommendations
---------------------------------

The NIBRS Project Steering Committee on October 29, 1996, in
Phoenix, Arizona, unanimously endorsed the first draft of these
recommendations.

The committee's recommendations were presented to the Uniform
Crime Reporting Subcommittee of the Criminal Justice Information
Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board (APB) at their meeting on
November 7, 1996, in Austin, Texas. The UCR subcommittee
suggested two wording changes and unanimously endorsed them. The
revised recommendations were unanimously endorsed by the full
CJIS APB at their meeting in San Diego, California, on December
10, 1996.

The NIBRS Project Steering Committee unanimously reaffirmed the
recommendations on February 13, 1997, in Washington, D.C.

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