What is Incident-Based Reporting?
The incident-based reporting (IBR) of criminal offenses or incidents is a data collection strategy that differs markedly from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s traditional summary-based Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. In IBR systems, law enforcement agencies maintain a database of the details of criminal incidents that are reported to them and report these details to their state UCR programs. In summary reporting, most local law enforcement agencies provide a monthly count of offenses and arrests for certain offense categories to their state UCR systems, which in turn report these totals to the FBI. Localities with IBR can fulfill the summary reporting requirements of the FBI’s UCR program by aggregating selected incident-level data. IBR systems, which are defined at the local and state levels, involve comprehensive data collection at the incident level on the various aspects of reported criminal incidents. Depending upon the design of the particular system, the information
