National Incident-Based Reporting System Focus Group and Interviews: Key Themes - October 2023

THEME 1: Federal support for the transition to NIBRS has played a key role in helping state and local law enforcement agencies transition to NIBRS, but it has not been large enough to encourage the biggest agencies to move more quickly. [...] State and local law enforcement agencies that have completed the transition to NIBRS said the approximately $120 million in federal grants provided by BJS and the FBI to 120 state Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) programs and local law enforcement agencies played an important role in their transition processes. [...] Funding and staffing constraints limit the ability of state UCR Programs to conduct data quality assessments and provide feedback to local law enforcement agencies before data are sent to the FBI. [...] The cost and potential complications of procuring and moving to a new RMS are high; yet, the benefits of reporting to NIBRS are often unclear. [...] One participant said, It will look like our stats are all higher because of NIBRS compared to the Summary Report … We need to educate our citizens about why our stats start to look different all of the sudden and the difference between NIBRS and the Summary Reporting System.