Victimology Assignment 3

Evaluation of Performance of NIBRS Author’s Name The Institutional Affiliation Course Number and Name Instructor Name Assignment Due Date Introduction The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a revolutionary step for the United States government to centralize and coordinate data related to criminal acts nationwide. This comprehensive crime data management system works as a reporting system that works with the coordination and collective feeding of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies of data related to criminal activities (FBI, 2024). Even though this system became operational in 2021, the concept and definition of NIBRS became common in the 1970s when American law enforcement agencies began to advance their data recording capabilities at the national level (FBI, 2024). Even though NIBRS offers several advantages related to the working of American law enforcement and crime reporting systems, it also poses some challenges. The following discussion, therefore, summarizes the advantages of NIBRS and highlights some disadvantages to provide a way to improve NIBRS’ performance. Advantages of NIBRS One of the prominent advantages of NIBRS is that it expands the horizon of crime reporting by including a greater number of crimes and offenses than the traditional summary reporting system does. In this regard, one may refer to the number of offenses or crimes that the NIBRS reporting system uses; in addition to the 52 regular offenses, this reporting system collects reports for ten additional offenses (FBI, 2024). In contrast, the traditional SRS is authorized to report ten offenses and 20 additional offenses for which reports and arrests are legally possible (FBI, 2024). Hence, NIBRS is a more extensive crime reporting system. In addition to the number of offenses, NIBRS provides much more detailed data on criminal offenses, such as the extent of crimes and whether they are completed or attempted. This reporting system also accepts data related to types of victims of related crimes; it also expands information concerning the relationship of victims with the offenses and offenders (FBI, 2024). To make the details of offenses and their victims more specific, this reporting system also provides demographic details of victims and offenders (FBI, 2024). This reporting system facilitates a greater understanding of the nature and effects of crime required to address this issue. NIBRS also differentiates crimes based on more specific categories than those used by SRS. Based on SRS’s working mechanism, crimes are categorized as cr...