Briefly describe the NIBR

An automated records system called NIBRS

An automated records system called NIBRS was developed to enhance the UCR’s data integrity. (Uniform crime Reporting Program). The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) uses it to gather information for criminal reporting. It was introduced in the US in 1985 and is now used annually to report crimes and disseminate pertinent information by incident by about 4,300 law enforcement organizations. Without using a hierarchy rule, the system gathers data about a crime using 58 different data components. Such details comprise property specifics, victim-offender relationships, and other crucial information used in criminal investigations. (Csaba, 2015). This strategy involves the analysis of the crime and events during the time the crime was committed. It comes up with a number of cases that relate to the crime – a strategy called incidence of crime. For instance, when a group of seven offenders attack seven victims, the NIBRS look at the age, ethnicity, race, sex and the relationship of the offenders to the victims and come up with more than seven crimes concerning the case.

Group A offenses in NIBRS

Group A offenses (which include suspected events and attempts) in NIBRS include investigative reports, arrests and incident reports. Group B offenses involve the arrest of the offender. They include bad checks, disorder conduct and drunkenness among others. These types of offenses are subjected to tactical strategic analysis at both the regional and local levels. Data of the crime is recorded through the use of NACJD website, where the researcher is allowed to come up with crimes that relate to the offense.

The combination of Group A and B crimes in NIBRS

The combination of Group A and B crimes in NIBRS include the modern crimes such as pornography, weapon violation, counterfeiting and prostitution.

Advantages and Disadvantages of NIBRS

Describe two advantages and two disadvantages of the NIBRS.

Advantages of NIBRS

The two advantages of the NIBRS include the ability of the system to analyze crimes in many different ways and the ability to collect incident based data about crime.

First, its ability to analyze crimes in many different ways helps in simplifying data sorting and classification. After investigation, the data is organized by various record types available in the system. The six main segments are; offense, property, administrative, arrestee and offender. Each crime is recorded in a different segment, but in a single file. This makes it easy to retrieve the data whenever it is needed.

Apart from the six main segments, there are other segment levels that occur during the investigation of the crime. Each crime is placed on its respective segment to make it easy to identify the type of crime committed by the offender.

Second, incident-based data used by NIRBS provides a large amount of information about a crime. This makes it easy to make clear and concise conclusions about the offender of the crime. For each of the crime reported, data about the incidence is collected. The data includes characteristics of the victim and the offender, nature and type of each specific offense in the incident, the characteristics of those arrested as a result of the crime incident, weapons used, incident location, the type and value of property that was stolen and that which is recovered. This kind of information largely helps in analyzing the data and coming up with the right solution about the case. It also expands the ability of the officer in charge of the case due to the ability to record data about each specific incident. In addition, different data can be combined and analyzed to give enough information about criminal activity in a certain area. Hence, 90 percent of the population in the United States uses the NIBRS system to report crimes. Some agencies even use private record management systems and purchase NIBRS component where they export the data through email to the NIBRS website (Justice, 2015).

Disadvantages of NIBRS

NIBRS deals with crimes that are reported to the police. The unreported crimes are not investigated and hence they are not recorded in the data system. It is only low percentage of crimes that are brought to the police attention. Some cases such as rape are hardly reported. Only about 30 percent or less of such cases are reported (Karmen, 2012).

Second, NIBRS deals with crimes that are included in the list of crimes. This makes it hard for some crimes to be reported since they cannot be classified among the crime groups offered by NIBRS. Due to this problem, some of the crimes remain unattended to.

NIBRS data is also subject to incomplete reporting when the information collected does not meet the accuracy and completeness required to record data, analyze and account for the issue. Such issues result to incomplete attendance of the reported crime. Also, the system has a lengthy certification. This makes it hard for some agencies to complete the investigation of some crimes.

The “great advantage” of the NIBRS data

What does the textbook say is the “great advantage” of the NIBRS data?

According to the book Victomology 6th Edition, the greatest advantage of NIBRS data is the fact that it uses incident-level details for every crime reported. This makes it easy for the data to be disaggregated to give information of the offender, the victim, offenses, arrestees, incidence of crime, and other details. It is designed to collect data on each single crime and incident of the reported occurrence. The NIBRS data elements are categorized in six segments. This include: the administrative, offense, property, victim, offender, and arrestee segments. These segments are used to deal with various incidences in a crime.

The administrative segment – this segment allows UCR program to identify a criminal incident report with each single incidence. It includes the date, the hour the incident occurred, exceptional date of clearance and exceptional clearance indicator.

Offense segment – a maximum of ten offenses associated with a particular crime incident are listed separately. Each offense is reported as a different crime from another.

Property segment – data about the type of property involved or stolen, the value and quantity of property in the incident is collected.

Victim segment – this segment describes the victim involved in the incident. If the incident involves different victims, then different data is recorded for each victim. The victim’s sex, age, race, ethnicity and resident are recorded. Each victim is linked to the offender by a number who committed the crime and the kind of relationship they have.

Offender segment – the age, sex, and race of the offender are recorded.

Arrestee segment – this includes the information of the person arrested. The date of arrest, race, ethnicity and sex of the arrested person are included in this segment (William & Steven, 2002).

The above classification gives more detailed information about the crime incident.

References

Fenyvesi, Csaba. “Classic and Modern Tendencies in the Meaning and System of Criminalistics.” SUBB Jurisprudentia (2015): 208

Justice, J. (2015). 7 Social Perspectives on Race and Crime. Criminology Perspectives on Race and Crime

Karmen, A. (2012). Crime victims: An introduction to Victimology. Cengage Learning

William, G., D., & Steven, P. (2002). Victimology