Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: Newly released statistics from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, provide a more precise look into every single crime incident than any other collection of data.

Randy Thysse: This allows us to collect crime statistics in a much richer, more detailed fashion.

Halpern: I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau, and this is FBI, This Week. For the first time, the report dissects facets of crime all the way from the local agency that reported it. Previously, the data was categorized only by state. Deputy Assistant Director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division Randy Thysse says this helps law enforcement adjust their resources accordingly.

Thysse: If a certain city, certain area has a spike in home invasions, it would allow the managers of those police forces to reallocate resources to address that crime problem.

Halpern: The data was collected from a third of the nation’s local law enforcement agencies. As more agencies participate in NIBRS, the nation’s crime problem will be even better assessed. The goal is for NIBRS to become the standard way for agencies to report crime data to the FBI.