Comparing The UCR And NIBRS System

The UCR and NIBRS systems are the most utilized crime systems by agencies across the country. The UCR focuses on eight index crime, while NIBRS has twenty two Group A offenses. These two reporting system are very similar. NIBRS goes beyond the limits of what the UCR can accomplish. The UCR and NIBRS coincide with each other, if an agency cannot meet the full participation requirements, it may limit itself to reporting details of incidents involving the UCR’s eight index crimes rather than the NIBRS’s expanded list of twenty-two crimes. For researches both reporting systems are useful depending how in-depth the research would like to go with their work. It also helps researches be more accurate with their numbers.
NIJ (2009) study found the following:
“Researchers used NIBRS data to examine the factors that influence police decisions to make arrests in domestic violence incidents and the prevalence of dual arrest across the nation. They found that dual arrest occurs more in same-sex than in heterosexual relationships and in states that have mandatory arrest policies but no primary aggressor provisions. The researchers suggest that if a state wants to minimize dual arrests, agencies may wish to institute primary aggressor provisions, change mandatory arrest policies to preferred arrest policies, and educate …show more content…
NIBRS goes into greater detail than UCR and has 46 Group an offenses while UCR only has 8 Part I offenses. UCR does not differentiate between completed and attempted crimes while NIBRS does. Also, UCR tends to only report the most serious offense reported when multiple crimes are reported in the same period of time, location, and person/group of people. The great thing about NIBRS is the data can be submitted electronically in the form of ASCII text files, needing no manual input. UCR data is written documents that have to be hand entered into a computer system for