Tagged: NIBRS

Unpacking the truth: California’s reforms and crime data accuracy

by · Aug 15, 2024 5:18 pm

In recent years, the debate surrounding criminal justice reforms in California, has sparked significant discussion. A recent paper by the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice claims that reforms such as Proposition 47 have led to a substantial decrease in property crime rates, citing a 53% reduction since 1995 and a 13% decline in Part I property crimes from 2009 to 2023. While the paper shows real data on reported crime, their analysis is oversimplified and missing several important details, presenting potential flaws in their argument.

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Comparing nationwide violent crime estimates: Summary-based vs. incident-based reporting

by · Nov 22, 2022 10:53 am

The FBI released official 2021 crime statistics last month, but the data leaves major gaps in our understanding of national-level crime rates. Unfortunately, the numbers are incomplete this year because 36% of U.S. law enforcement agencies, some of them major cities, failed to submit their crime reports. This is largely because the FBI made major changes to the way that it collects crime data, making the submission process much more complicated. Rather than following the arduous process, many agencies simply declined to participate in last year’s data collection. In comparison, 2020 crime statistics included data from 85% of U.S. law enforcement agencies.

This post briefly reviews agency participation rates and discusses what that means for our current understanding of national-level crime. Then, using data from the years 2017-2020 (all of the years for which data from both systems are available),  I examine whether the two systems produce similar violent crime estimates. Continue reading . . .

Violent crime is a key issue for U.S. midterm election

by · Nov 7, 2022 11:47 am

Crime has become a big issue in the U.S. midterm elections. According to a recent Gallup poll, crime ranked as the second most important issue among voters, with 71% of registered voters saying it was either “extremely” or “very” important to their vote. This came second after the economy, which 85% of voters said would be extremely or very important to their vote. According to a different Gallup survey released a few weeks ago, more than half of Americans (56%) said there was more crime in their area compared to a year ago. According to Gallup, “That’s up a whopping 11 points from 2021 and 18 points from 2020, and is the highest mark ever measured.” This issue was a concern across party lines, with 73% of Republicans, 51% of Independents, and 42% of Democrats all agreeing that crime is getting worse (in 2020, these percentages were 38%, 38%, and 37%, respectively).

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2021 national crime rates are a mystery as FBI transitions to a new data system

by · Oct 21, 2022 7:29 am

Earlier this month, the FBI released the national-level crime statistics for 2021. According to that data, violent crime, particularly murder, remained a major issue in the United States. Crime remained relatively consistent from 2020 to 2021 with no statistically significant changes between years, though violent crime was still elevated compared to 2019 levels. From 2020 to 2021, national levels of violent crime decreased slightly (-1.0%), largely driven by decreases in robbery (-8.9%). Murders, however, increased (+4.3%). The data is available for download via the Crime Data Explorer, or it can be accessed using a new tool called the Law Enforcement Agency Reported Crime Analysis Tool (LEARCAT). But the data this year may be lower quality than years past, limiting our ability to draw inferences about national-level crime rates.

Policymakers and researchers rely on these data to understand state and national crime trends, but that may be more challenging this year. Unfortunately, the FBI’s plan to modernize its reporting of crime data has not gone according to plan, so it’s hard know how accurate these 2021 estimates are. The new system has advantages over the old system, but it is much more cumbersome and time-consuming to use, which has negatively impacted law enforcement agencies’ willingness to submit their data. And because of these low participation rates, there are huge gaps in nationwide crime statistics for 2021.

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FBI releases 2020 incident-level crime statistics

by · Dec 8, 2021 10:52 am

On December 6, the FBI released detailed 2020 crime data for offenses reported to law enforcement in the United States. According to the 2020 data, nearly 9 million crimes were reported to police in 2020. 60.5% (about 5.4 million) were property crimes, 25.2% (about 2.2 million) were crimes against persons, and 14.3% (about 1.3 million) were crimes against society. The most commonly reported offenses were larceny/theft, assault, and drug/narcotic offenses, respectively.

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Preliminary 2020 crime data shows increase in homicides and aggravated assaults

by · Sep 27, 2021 11:23 am

Today the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) released preliminary findings of their soon to be released annual report, Crime in the United States: 2020. While the final publication has not yet been released, the data can be accessed through the Crime Data Explorer. Additionally, publications from prior years are accessible online.

The preliminary data revealed that violent crime is up for the first time in four years, with 1,277,696 violent crimes reported to United States law enforcement in 2020. The violent crime rate (which accounts for population size) was 387.8 per 100,000 — a 5.2% increase when compared with 2019 rates (380.8 per 100,000). The violent crime increase appears to be a result of increases in aggravated assaults (+12.0%) and murders (+29.4%). However, not all types of violent crime increased from 2019 to 2020 — robbery decreased 9.3% and rape (revised definition) decreased 12.0%. Conversely, property crime is down, with 6,452,038 property crimes reported to law enforcement in 2020. The property crime rate (again, accounting for population size) was 1958.2 per 100,000, which decreased 8.1% when compared with 2019 rates (2130.6 per 100,000). The decrease in property crime appears to be driven by decreases in burglary (-7.4%) and larceny-theft (-10.6%). In contrast, auto thefts increased (+11.8%). It is important to note that crimes of arson are not included in property crime estimates, due to disparities in the agencies that submitted data for arson.

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The future of crime data in policing

by · Jun 24, 2021 3:56 pm

January 1, 2021 marked the end of an era when the FBI officially retired the nearly 100-year old Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system in lieu of a more comprehensive option known as the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The UCR, otherwise referred to as “simple summary reporting” (SRS) was introduced in 1929, and essentially reported aggregated counts of crimes at monthly and yearly intervals for participating law enforcement agencies. NIBRS was introduced in 1982 in an attempt to modernize the UCR, emphasizing incident-level data collection rather than aggregate-level. The purpose of this was to provide more detail and context about each incident (e.g. details on victims or offenders of crime, characteristics of the incident) to improve crime data quality (and quantity). The comprehensive data collected via NIBRS would allow for more opportunities to analyze patterns of crime and apply it to the field. However, one downside of NIBRS is that data are more burdensome for law enforcement agencies to collect. Further, participation in both UCR and NIBRS is voluntary for law enforcement agencies, meaning that additional burden might affect participation rates. Not surprisingly, participation rates are typically higher for the UCR, making it the preferred official source for reported crime data up until very recently. Continue reading . . .

Defunding the police: An evidence-based approach?

by · May 20, 2021 9:35 am

In the months following the death of George Floyd, there have been an increasing number of protests aimed at taking a stand against police brutality and “defunding” the police. The slogan “defund the police” has since been adopted by various activist groups and is now being seriously debated by politicians and lawmakers across the country. Despite the fact that Americans are mixed on whether they support the idea, the slogan has nonetheless become an increasingly popular political talking point. While the argument that America’s police departments are in need of reform is not without merit, that does not mean that defunding the police is the answer.

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