Methods for understanding and analyzing NIBRS data

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is an incident-based crime reporting program for local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies; Within each criminal incident, NIBRS captures information on offenses, victims, offenders, property, and persons arrested, as well as information about the incident itself. The ability to link and analyze this detailed information is a significant improvement to the existing Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) summary reporting system. As one might expect, however, this increase in crime data significantly complicates the life of the data analyst, particularly when cross tabulating the NIBRS data. To deal with the complexity of NIBRS data, one must understand its structure. This article provides an overview of the NIBRS structure and methods for maneuvering within it to present and interpret correctly cross tabulations of the NIBRS data.