Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: For the first time ever, the FBI releases a more extensive collection of crime data of the United States.

I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau, and this is FBI, This Week. The National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, is comprehensive because it accounts for incident-level crime data for 22 offense categories. As David Cuthbertson, the assistant director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division explains, the NIBRS 2011 contains information about offenders, victims, and…

David Cuthbertson: Some of the new categories include gang offenses, weapons offenses, and some vice offenses.

Halpern: Law enforcement will use the data to allocate resources where the data shows they are needed.

Cuthbertson: The data will also be used by criminologists to study crime in the United States at a greater level that has ever been available before.

Halpern: Nearly 6,000 law enforcement agencies in 35 states submitted the data. The FBI is working with the Department of Justice to facilitate the participation of additional police agencies. The goal is for NIBRS to become the standard way for law enforcement to report crime data to the FBI. For more details, visit www.fbi.gov.