Shifting the Crime Reporting Paradigm—Lessons Learned from the FBI's Transition to NIBRS

Staff from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will discuss the current state of their work with data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). This webinar will examine:

1. The status of the NIBRS transition and how reporting has changed over time.
2. Efforts to investigate the quality and completeness of NIBRS data, in order to assess implications of data quality on coverage, estimates of bias, and the suitability of the data for generating national and state-level estimates on key indicators of crime.
3. Lessons learned from working with NIBRS data, including how states can use the data to calculate state-level crime rates, ideas for standardizing the use and display of NIBRS data, and tools to facilitate use of NIBRS data by both seasoned and novice users.

Panelists:

• Erica L. Smith, Chief, Law Enforcement Incident-Based Statistics Unit, BJS
• Kimberly Martin, Statistician, Law Enforcement Incident-Based Statistics Unit, BJS
• Drema Fouch, Management and Program Analyst, Crime and Law Enforcement Statistics Unit, FBI