Using National Incident-Based Reporting System data to assess agency differences in clearance rates: a recommendation for law enforcement

ABSTRACT

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) disaggregates crime clearances into crimes cleared by arrest and crimes cleared by exceptional means. This feature is an improvement to the Summary Reporting System and allows law enforcement agencies to perform cross-jurisdiction comparisons of their clearance practices and investigative performances. This study uses sexual assault clearance rates to demonstrate a method of cross-jurisdiction comparison, which can be used to improve agency practices. Findings show much variability in sexual assault clearance rates across agencies, but most of this variation is explained by agency use of clearance by exceptional means. Further, no single agency characteristic examined here explained variability in exceptional clearance rates. Finally, there was additional agency variation in the offense type used to clear a sexual assault by arrest. The article concludes with a discussion of the importance of NIBRS for advancing law enforcement research and practice and the need for greater attention to data quality in NIBRS.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual assault
• clearance rates
• law enforcement
• cross-jurisdiction comparisons
• national incident-based reporting system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The current article focuses on law enforcement in the United States due to its focus on the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which is a United States-based crime recording system. Much of the discussion applies to the application of cross-jurisdiction comparisons by LEAs in other countries, especially those in countries with a similar interagency crime dataset.

2. In future cross-jurisdiction comparisons, researchers or practitioners could collect additional data from a sample of LEAs to better explain interagency variation in clearance outcomes. Ideally, LEAs will increasingly find these comparisons to be an effective method for improving the efficiency and impact of agency operations and will collect and publicize a greater amount of data to support them.

3. For law enforcement professionals interested in using LCA, there are several free and straightforward explanations of LCA available online, such as: https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/sas/dae/latent-class-analysis/ and https://www.stata.com/meeting/uk18/slides/uk18_MacDonald.pdf.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas L. Scott

Thomas Scott is a social scientist in the Policing Research Program at RTI International. As part of the NCS-X Implementation Project, Mr. Scott assesses the quality of NIBRS data and disseminates findings from NIBRS. Mr. Scott has conducted research on police investigations, gun markets, and the correctional system and has published this work in Criminology & Public Policy, Police Quarterly, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, and Corrections: Policy, Practice and Research.

Kevin J. Strom

Kevin Strom is a center director at RTI International, where he leads the Center for Policing Research and Investigative Science. Dr. Strom has conducted research across a range of topics in criminology with a focus on policing and forensic science, including work aimed at increasing efficiencies and outcomes in forensic evidence processing. Dr. Strom currently directs the NCS-X Implementation Project, working with BJS and the FBI to assist state and local agencies successfully transition to NIBRS. He also leads BJA’s Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI) Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) project, working with state and local jurisdictions across the country in their sexual assault reform efforts. Dr. Strom serves on the research advisory committees for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Police Executive Research Forum. Dr. Strom received his doctoral degree from the University of Maryland—College Park.

Michael Planty

Michael Planty is the senior director for the Center for Community Safety & Crime Prevention in RTI International’s Division for Applied Justice Research. Dr. Planty has extensive research experience in the areas of victimization, sexual violence, school violence and safety, law enforcement, criminal justice systems, and national indicators of crime and violence. He has formulated, directed, and led numerous large-scale national projects in his roles as deputy director and unit chief for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). He has employed quantitative and qualitative methods in his research and has extensive experience designing studies, developing survey instruments, analyzing data, and disseminating findings. Dr. Planty has published and presented numerous research papers on a wide variety of topics.