A Journalist's Guide to the FBI's 2021 Crime Statistics

[Nevilledog]

https://justjournalism.org/media/download/cjj-fbi-crime-stats-2022.pdf

This fall, the FBI will release data on 2021 crime trends. This release will come at a critical time, just a few weeks before an election in which political candidates are using scare tactics about crime in their campaigns, misinformation about crime abounds, and people are looking for effective solutions to address violence in their communities.

This release would be high-stakes no matter what, but some aspects of this year’s data heighten the need for careful media coverage. This year’s data will be different from previous years’ because of a recent transition to a new data reporting system. Some of these differences could drive further confusion and misperceptions about crime trends. Media coverage of the data can provide the information that people need to accurately interpret the data and situate it in a historic context. This guide provides background on the changes to this year’s FBI crime data, along with bigger picture context on the challenges associated with using crime data as a public safety metric.

The New Reporting System

Through the Uniform Crime Reporting program, the FBI collects data on particular crimes from local police agencies and compiles them into national estimates. Since it launched the program in 1930, the FBI has relied on the Summary Reporting System (SRS). In 1991, the FBI launched a second reporting system called the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), but allowed local police agencies to submit data using either system. In 2016, the FBI announced that it would phase out SRS and only accept data through NIBRS beginning in 2021. Here’s a bit more about each system:

• The Summary Reporting System followed the hierarchy rule. If multiple crimes were reported in a single incident, only the most severe crime, according to a hierarchy of seven “index crimes” developed by the FBI1, was counted. For example, if a person assaulted another individual and then stole a nearby car to leave the scene, the assault would be recorded but the motor vehicle theft would not be.

• The National Incident Based Reporting System records the number of offenses, not incidents. To return to the example above, if this situation were recorded with NIBRS, both the assault and the motor vehicle theft would be counted. NIBRS also tracks data on more crimes and includes more demographic and situational data, such as the race and gender of both the person accused of the crime and victim, the relationship between the person accused of the crime and the victim, and the date, hour, and type of location (i.e. home, bar, store) of the reported incident.

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