Fairfield Police Department is proud to begin participating in the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). As the new national data collection standard, NIBRS captures details on victims, known offenders, relationships between victims and offenders, arrestees, property, and drugs involved in crimes for up to 10 offenses within an incident, representing a substantial shift in the way Fairfield Police Department reports crime.

Fairfield Police Department is changing how information on victimization and offending is collected and reported in order to meet federal data standards, improve operations, and better inform the 
public about the nature of crime in Fairfield. NIBRS data provide the detailed, 
accurate, and meaningful information needed about crime. 

Fairfield Police Department is now reporting NIBRS-compliant crime data to the California Incident Based Reporting System (CIBRS) for submission to the FBI, Fairfield Police Department is making it a priority to do our part and support the national transition to NIBRS.

Transitioning to NIBRS will enable Fairfield Police Department to give context to specific public safety problems. With this change, officers will be able to provide the community with in-depth information about victimization and offending. 

NIBRS collects information on nearly every major criminal justice issue facing law enforcement, including weapons offenses, drug offenses and drug involvement in all offenses, gangs, domestic violence, child and elder abuse, hate crimes, white collar crime, and terrorism. The additional detailed crime incident data are captured in a standardized format, which provides greater analytic capability and makes NIBRS a superior crime reporting standard.

Fairfield Police Department went live with the launch of NIBRS, the National Incident-Based Reporting System and CIBRS, the California Incident-Based Reporting System, in November of 2022. The result is a more robust and complete data for law enforcement, researchers, and the public. 

NIBRS:

• Provides greater specificity in reporting offenses. Not only does NIBRS look at all of the offenses within an incident, but it also looks at many more offenses than the traditional SRS does. NIBRS collects data for 52 offenses, plus 10 additional offenses for which only arrests are reported. SRS counts limited data for 10 offenses and 20 additional crimes for which only arrests are reported.

• What does this mean for our statistics? Under traditional reporting methods, a hierarchical system was used. This meant that although a single incident might contain multiple offenses, only the most egregious offense was reported. I.e. While homicide might also entail the taking of property, it was reported as a homicide, in lieu of a homicide and robbery. NIBRS enables Fairfield Police Department to report each offense within a single incident, separately. This means that crime statistics reported using NIBRS data should not be compared with crime statistics reported using the traditional counting rules.

• Collects more detailed information, including incident date and time, whether reported offenses were attempted or completed, expanded victim types, relationships of victims to offenders and offenses, demographic details, location data, property descriptions, drug types and quantities, the offender’s suspected use of drugs or alcohol, the involvement of gang activity, and whether a computer was used in the commission of the crime.

• Helps give context to specific crime problems such as drug/narcotics and sex offenses, as well as issues like animal cruelty, identity theft, and computer hacking.

• Provides greater analytic flexibility. Through NIBRS, data users can see many more facets of crime, as well as relationships and connections among these facets, than SRS provides.

Click the link below to view our reports. 

Link to View NIBRS Statistics

Gardner, A., & Aagaard, B. (2020, December). NIBRS Transition Press Release Template. National Crime Statistics Exchange (NCS-X) Initiative Technical Assistance and Implementation Project. Available at https://www.theiacp.org/sites/ default/files/NCSX_NIBRS_Press_Release_Template.pdf