Transition to reporting incident-based crime data

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 QuadCom Public Safety Police and Fire consortium is comprised of the South Barrington Police Department, an NCS-X agency, and five other agencies. In total, the QuadCom law enforcement consortium is staffed by 152 sworn and 27 civilian personnel and reports more than 37,000 crime incidents annually. The goal of this project is to submit incident-based crime data, from all 6 Quadcom agencies, to the Illinois 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, QuadCom will (1) upgrade its records management system (RMS), (2) obtain hardware and software to support the RMS, (3) receive technical assistance from the RMS vendor, and (4) train personnel in collecting and reporting incident-based data. QuadCom will work with the Illinois 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