This is a bit of an odd one. There was a story this weekend out of the Galveston Daily News that had this interesting tidbit buried in it:
Some of the figures might not reflect an exact number of crimes reported, as Galveston police changed the way it reports crimes to the state and FBI. The department used an incident-based reporting system for half of 2011, police Lt. Bryon Frankland said.
When compared to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, however, the numbers would be different because the FBI excludes multiple offense data derived from the same instance of a crime. For example, if a person is killed during a burglary, the FBI lists only the homicide in its Uniform Crime Report.
I think there is a couple of things worth noting, one I'm a little puzzled why Galveston Police would change from reporting crimes using the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) mid year. I'm not puzzled about why an agency would switch from NIBRS to UCR. NIBRS is generally seen as more complicated than the much older UCR system.
Of course, the UCR system which was designed in 1929 has it's share of faults. NIBRS which was designed in the late 1980's is probably a better system but given it's additional complication, there is no compelling reason for law enforcement agencies to adopt it.
I'm interested in why an agency would make the switch from NIBRS to UCR or what reasons are there to switch from UCR to NIBRS?
