4. Usability
Law enforcement agencies tend to see national crime data reporting as an administrative task; few make full and effective use of the insights that the rich NIBRS data can provide. The primary federal online data tool is cumbersome and does not always allow even expert users to easily extract the statistics they seek.
Many local and state law enforcement agencies skillfully use the data they collect to make real-time decisions about where to deploy officers and other tactics. But few law enforcement agencies make full and effective use of the insights that the rich data reported to NIBRS can provide, such as gleaning relevant information about the relationships between victims and offenders or exploring the circumstances surrounding incidents where multiple crimes occur. Instead of seeing NIBRS as a tool that can help them be more effective, many officers instead see reporting to NIBRS as a burdensome administrative task. Working Group members expressed the need to identify ways to enhance the usability of NIBRS for law enforcement agencies, public officials and policymakers, researchers, and members of the media through the creation of “playbooks,” or user guides, to unlock the value of NIBRS as a tool that can add narratives to criminal incidents and lead to more effective responses.
An Underutilized Resource: Statistical Analysis Centers
Forty-nine states (every state but Texas) have a Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) designated by state authority to use data from all facets of the justice system to conduct research and analysis and support the administration of criminal and juvenile justice.44 The majority of SACs (n=32) are administered within a State Administering Agency, although 10 states house their SACs in other state agencies, and seven are housed in universities (Figure 4).45
SACs are authorized to collect, analyze, and report crime and criminal justice statistics to serve all levels of government and the public and support BJS and national priorities. Analyses and dissemination focus on core areas, including incident-based crime data and criminal justice system performance, as well as data accessibility and special projects, such as using criminal history records for research and conducting targeted analyses with administrative data.46
However, a 2022 survey of SAC directors and designees representing 44 states suggests the centers are an under-utilized resource. Nearly half (45%) of the respondents reported being unable to conduct research and analysis at the expected levels due to a lack of research staff, with comments indicating that salary constraints were a barrier to hiring and retention.47 More than a third of respondents (38%) noted challenges due to poor data quality, while 33% indicated problems accessing relevant data. As a result, SACs have played a limited role in unlocking the value of NIBRS data.
Accessibility of Crime Trends Data
In addition to the need to enhance the utility of national crime data to criminal justice agencies and leaders, such data should be more easily accessible to the public and researchers. National reports made available to the public should offer clear, simple, and complete time series data that can be used to generate crime trends according to user specifications. Currently, the online tool maintained by the FBI is cumbersome, and even expert users sometimes face difficulty in easily extracting the statistics they seek.
The FBI has made improvements to its online tool, the Crime Data Explorer (CDE),48 but several shortcomings remain and limit the usefulness of crime trends data to policy and practice.49 While historical crime data extend back through 1960, CDE provides access only as far back as 1985. Data on the CDE are not available according to FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-Usable),50 and restrictions are placed on how users can access and query the data. Comparing data between states, cities, and cities of different sizes is difficult to execute, an issue amplified by the elimination of these comparisons from the Crime in the U.S. reports published by the FBI beginning in 2021. (Note: Other online tools – notably, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)51 platform – allow users to explore trends and make comparisons across data sources and time periods.) Further, in the CDE, data sources are not always properly documented, nor are there sufficient resources available to support user navigation of the platform.
In addition to the FBI’s CDE, BJS created the Law Enforcement Agency Reported Crime Analysis Tool (LEARCAT),52 a dashboard that enables users to examine crime information reported to NIBRS by participating law enforcement agencies. This tool provides interactive data visualizations and filtering tools to explore crime and victimization metrics based on user-defined parameters. Users can generate incident and victimization counts, rates, and percentages by incident and victim characteristics. It is important to note that while LEARCAT and the CDE both present NIBRS data, the tools use different definitions for some offense categories, such that counts between the two sources may differ.53
BJS also created the National Crime Victimization Survey Data Dashboard (N-DASH) tool.54 It presents estimates from the NCVS as interactive data visualizations, providing users with a range of views and analysis types to explore questions of interest. Users can explore victimization by crime type, reporting to police, victim-offender relationship, weapon use, and victim services use, and can assess trends in victimization over time across various demographic factors through drop-down menus.
