NCJ Number
159913
Date Published
1995
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This paper discusses how police agencies can use incident- based reporting programs to analyze crime patterns and trends.
Abstract
The author is developing a National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)-like program specifically designed to study violence on a university campus. Incident-based data for a single police agency are useful and can have substantive importance. Incident- based data in an NIBRS format can be analyzed using a word processor and a good statistical package; eventually, standard NIBRS software will become commercially available. This paper emphasizes, however, that incident-based data cannot be analyzed using traditional approaches to rectangular data files.