To understand NIBRS, it's important to have a little background in crime reporting within the United States. Historically, data has been fragmented until the FBI stepped in to create a system to store and classify this data. The FBI introduced a new system, NIBRS, in 2015 which enables more granular data classification, maintenance and reporting.
Fragmentation in Crime Data
The "Policing 101" document released by the Department of Justice states that, "[a]ccording to the FBI, there are more than 18,000 local police departments in the United States. These departments are subject to different state, county, and city laws and codes, and they have different policies, practices, and officer training programs. There is no universal standard for the structure, size, or governance of police departments in the United States." Due to the management of law enforcement by city, county and state agencies, historically there has been a great deal of fragmentation across the country in the way that criminal data is documented and maintained.
FBI Develops UCR in 1930
To deal with this issue, the FBI developed the Uniform Crime Reporting program (UCR) and collected data through the Summary Reporting System (SRS). The history of UCR is outlined in the "About the UCR Program," published by the FBI in September 2018 and included as an attachment at the end of this article.
The "About the UCR Program," publication states that, "In January 1930, 400 cities representing 20 million inhabitants in 43 states began participating in the UCR Program, then administered by the IACP. That same year, Congress enacted Title 28, Section 534, of the United States Code (U.S.C.) authorizing the attorney general to gather crime information. The attorney general, in turn, designated the FBI to serve as the national clearinghouse for the crime data collected beginning in September 1930. Since then, the FBI has obtained data based on uniform classifications and procedures for reporting offenses and arrests from the nation’s law enforcement agencies."
FBI Sees Need for New System of Collecting, Reporting and Storing Crime Data
Since the Summary Reporting System (SRS)was developed early on as a paper-based system, steps were put into place to simplify the reporting, enabling local law enforcement agencies to cooperate in the collection and submission of data. As this article outlines, even though "SRS has evolved over the decades to include electronic submission capability, more categories of crime data, and a few incident-based factors, but it is still very limited and outdated in its basic concept." The FBI realized there was a need to create and transition to a new system.
Development of a New Incident-Based System Initiated
The "About the UCR Program" publication outlines how: "Although the data collected and disseminated by the UCR Program remained virtually unchanged throughout the years, in the 1980s, a broad utility had evolved for UCR. Recognizing the need for improved statistics, law enforcement called for a thorough evaluative study to modernize the UCR Program." As a result, the FBI developed National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). As mentioned, NIBRS was "[i]mplemented to improve the overall quality of crime data collected by law enforcement...NIBRS goes much deeper[than (SRS)] because of its ability to provide circumstances and context for crimes like location, time of day, and whether the incident was cleared."
Transitioning to NIBRS
As outlined in this article about the transition to NIBRS,
"On December 3, 2015, the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Advisory Policy Board, in cooperation with representatives of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the Major County Sheriffs’ Association, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and the U.S. Department of Justice, resolved that the FBI should retire SRS within five years and collect UCR data only through NIBRS thereafter. On February 9, 2016, FBI Director James B. Comey approved the recommendation and announced that the FBI would retire SRS on January 1, 2021, and collect crime data only through NIBRS. (Note: All of the SRS archival data will remain available, but the national program will only process NIBRS data from that date forward.)"
In addition, as described in the FBI published document dated from October 2018 called "30 Questions and Answers About the NIBRS transition, "[a]s is the case with the UCR Program in general, federal law does not mandate local and state participation in NIBRS. Local and state agency participation in NIBRS is voluntary. However, states and agencies may be required by state or local law to participate."
Evident's Platform Aligns with NIBRS Classification System
Because of the widespread national adherence by local law enforcement agencies the to FBI's recommendations, Evident leverages this crime classification system to generate the list of approximately 60 crime categories available to select or deselect within an offense group as part of the background check policy. The 2019 NIBRS User Manual aligns with the Evident Crime Categories and can be referenced for more information as you are configuring your policy.
Linked References:
Here is a link to the FBI's repository of documents on UCR where you can find all of the most up to date documentation on NIBRS.
Here is a link to the FBI NIBRS page.
Here is a link outlining the transition from SRS to NIBRS quoted in this article multiple times.
Attached References
Below are the published PDF versions of the articles noted in the article as well as the 2019 NIBRS User Manual published by the FBI which should be your source of truth for the Evident platform's current Criminal Policy UI.