Recommendation 3
Create a comprehensive portrait of crime in America
Recommendation 3
Create a comprehensive portrait of crime in America
Implementation Steps
1.
In partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other federal agencies, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) should publish a comprehensive annual compendium of crime in the U.S. The first such report should be published in 2025. Law enforcement data collected through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and victim survey data collected through the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) should be published simultaneously, and the combined publication should seek to explain any significant difference in the reported trends. This report should include information on major violent and property offenses (Group A and Group B offenses in NIBRS),74 as well as on other important types of crime, including intellectual property theft, cybercrime, hate crime, crimes against animals, environmental crimes, campaign finance and elections offenses, securities fraud, embezzlement, and other forms of white-collar crime.75 In subsequent years, the compendium should include regular reports on firearms crime trends and seek to integrate additional sources of data from public health surveillance systems and other stakeholders.
2.
To enhance access to information in between the publication of annual reports, BJS should create an updated website that provides access to downloadable crime trends data and visualizations dating back to 1960. The site should comply with FAIR principles (data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-Usable).76 Data should be described and footnoted in ways that make it clear where information was incomplete or where estimate techniques were used, important tables should have unique URLs, and data should be downloadable in ASCII and .csv format to maximize accessibility.
3.
The FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division should prioritize recommendations to improve how NIBRS captures information on crimes involving firearms. Specifically, CJIS should prioritize producing technical specifications for recently approved recommendations related to firearm assaults.77
4.
The CDC should improve the accuracy and completeness of the health surveillance systems that collect information on violent deaths and firearms assaults and injuries by prioritizing the following actions:
- The CDC should direct the National Center for Health Statistics to develop a plan to address the systematic miscoding of firearms assaults and injuries in hospital discharge coding.
- The CDC should double the number of state health departments participating in the Firearm Injury Surveillance Through Emergency Rooms (FASTER) program’s Advancing Violence Epidemiology in Real-Time (FASTER: AVERT) initiative from 12 to 24 as a first step to making FASTER: AVERT available in all 50 states. The CDC should also expand opportunities for states and emergency departments to provide timely access to select FASTER: AVERT data to researchers and work with state health departments to increase access to non-fatal firearm injury data.
- The CDC should continue to support the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in its efforts to increase the number of hospitals participating in the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Firearm Injury Surveillance System (NEISS-FISS), including by providing support to vendors assisting with hospital recruitment and selection.
5.
The Office of Justice Programs and the CDC should fund pilot projects to explore ways to integrate crime trends and public health data.78 As part of this effort, the CDC and BJS should “crosswalk” criminal justice and public health definitions where competing descriptions could lead to confusion, link data sources, and engage in cross-agency analysis of violent crimes and victimizations.
6.
BJS, in collaboration with the CDC and other federal agencies, should produce regular reports on firearm-related crime and injury trends. The reports should be published at least every other year (currently, these data are published only in special reports),79 and also should provide trends across demographic groups.80 As part of this work, BJS should develop standards and processes for capturing consistent estimates of firearm fatalities; non-fatal firearm assaults, including whether a gun was used as a blunt instrument (e.g., pistol-whipping) or was brandished (i.e., unlawfully displayed) during an assault; the use of firearms in intimate partner violence and domestic abuse incidents; and the use of stolen firearms in criminal incidents. Disaggregating information by sex, race, and other demographic characteristics should be prioritized to examine how gun crime affects different population subgroups.
