NIBRS Reporting Transition from UCR Project for Onondaga County Law Enforcement Agencies

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division partnered to implement the National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X), an initiative to expand the number of law enforcement agencies (LEA) reporting crime data to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The NCS-X Initiative will support a scientifically selected sample of 400 LEAs in reporting incident-based crime data to NIBRS. BJS will be able to produce statistically sound, detailed national estimates of crime known to law enforcement when data from the 400 NCS-X agencies are combined with crime data submitted by the nearly 6,900 LEAs currently reporting to NIBRS.

The FY2020 solicitation furthers the goals of the NCS-X initiative by providing continued assistance to NCS-X grantees in order to assist them in transitioning to NIBRS reporting. Supplemental NCS-X funds will be used to obtain additional contract resources to make the CHAIRS2 (C2) records management system compliant with state and federal incident-based reporting requirements. Supplemental funding will support contract hours for application development, improving automation by streamlining workflow, ensuring NIBRS compliance and requirements have been met, conducting training sessions, and preparing documentation for creating test plans for trainings. OCIT will deploy the RMS to law enforcement agencies in Onondaga County for use to submit incident-based crime data to the New York Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

NCA/NCF

The National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) is an effort to expand the FBI’s 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 6,900 agencies that currently report to NIBRS, 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 FBI’s 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. The FY2019 solicitation furthers the goals of the NCS-X initiative by providing funding to the remaining states and local agencies in the NCS-X sample in order to assist them transition to NIBRS reporting.

The Onondaga County consortium is comprised of the Syracuse Police Department and the Manlius Police Department, both NCS-X agencies, as well as 36 other law enforcement agencies. In total, the Onondaga County law enforcement consortium is staffed by about 2,000 sworn and 350 civilian personnel and reports more than 80,000 crime incidents annually. The goal of this project is to submit incident-based crime data to the New York Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, that is compliant with both the state’s reporting requirements and the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) standard. To accomplish this goal, the Onondaga County consortium will (1) obtain a NIBRS-compliant records management system (RMS), (2) obtain hardware and equipment to support reporting incident-based data, (3) receive technical assistance to support incident-based reporting, and (4) train personnel in collecting and reporting incident-based data. Onondaga County will work with the New York UCR Program to certify data meet the state’s incident-based reporting requirements and will submit NIBRS-complaint incident-based data as a final deliverable of this award.

CA/NCF