POSITION PAPER

Posted by Winnie Melda on November 9th, 2018

INTRODUCTION

At the moment the leaders of the law enforcement community are discussing the need of building a new National Program of Crime Statistics (NCS-X). The proposed NCS-X is going to reflect modern elements of crime and other related activities. NCS-X can be said to be a collaborative undertaking with the support of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) among other Department of Justice agencies. The implementation of NCS-X is goal-bound and reaching this goal will see the NCS-X collaborate with the law enforcement agencies through which they will begin reporting their NIBRS data. As much as there is hype surrounding the implementation of NCS-X, there is a possibility that it might be beneficial or not to the implementation of the law enforcement agencies nationwide (Blumstein & Wallman, 2006).

BENEFITS OF NCS-X IMPLEMENTATION

            The current trends in the public safety as well as policing have been constantly moving towards transparency. Additionally, the emphasis is on the data-driven together with community policing. For this and many other reasons, the NCS-X program will be beneficial to the implementation of the law enforcement agencies nationwide. At the same time, it is important to have a collection of crime and incident data. This could not be possible without the implementation of the NCS-X program. The data collected through the NCS-X will enable the implementation of crime analysis at both national and local levels and at all times to start with the entry of accurate and consistent data. The FBI and other law enforcement communities have for long wanted to provide a national picture of the crime situation in the United States. However, the effort of the FBI has been hampered by the voluntary nature of the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program. Additionally, before the implementation of the NCS-X program, there were two reporting systems found in the UCR program. The two reporting systems are Summary Reporting and Incident-Based Reporting. With the implementation of the NCS-X program, the FBI will be in a position to provide a national picture of the crime situation in the United States.

            Through the NCS-X program, the law enforcement communities are now in a position of submitting data based on different reporting models. Therefore, it has become very easy for the FBI to provide a single, comprehensive statistics of crime view for the United States as a whole. Before the NCS-X program, the law enforcement agencies were providing crime reporting using the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIRBS) and Summary Crime Reporting Data which were not comprehensive. The disparity between the NIRBS and other crime reporting systems negatively affect the public safety community in several ways which translate into inefficiency in reporting and analysis of vague crime. The implementation of the NCS-X program has brought about a proactive approach to some of these problems. It introduces a sense of partnering with standards governing bodies, customers, and law enforcement communities across the nation to enable participation in an initiative thus getting more agencies reporting with the NCS-X data (Penney, 2014).

            The data collected through the NCS-X program does not overlap. Therefore, the aggregate statistical representation of crime rate and trend in the United States is simplified so as to present NIBRS data as summary data. Therefore, while one is trying to create a sample of various population centers may be a misrepresentation of crime statistics. The launching of the initiative and program of the NCS-X helps the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) to improve national crime reporting as well as gathering statistics that easily represents national crime trends. The NCS-X aims at increasing the number of agencies reporting incidents based on the crime statistics to the FBI. Before the launching of the NCS-X, the information collected then, and the way it was collected in the previous system was so different, and law enforcement communities and agencies were forced to use one or another. The NCS-X has become the more comprehensive reporting platform. Additionally, through the NCS-X initiative, there are sufficient NIBRS contributors to make the program statistically relevant as a national model. The NCS-X has made it possible for the BJS to achieve their goal of expanding their goal of NIBRS.

            The implementation of the NCS-X program has expanded to cover a wider range of the types of offense and at the same time provide comprehensive information and data on the nature of criminal incidents. In the same way, data processing capabilities of national programs and the law enforcement communities are now at par with the antiquated methods of the UCR program. This would not have been possible without the implementation of the NCS-X program. The NCS-X has gone on to replace the aggregate crime counts found in the forms as the source of national crime statistics. Additionally, the nation no longer depends on the eight numbers trended annually to closely monitor the volume and characteristics of crimes know to the law enforcement communities. The state has spent hundreds million dollars and expend unknown number of hours thus enabling and launching the NCS-X program. This has supported the production of national crime statistics (Sherman et al., 1998).

            At the moment, 5,000 of the almost 20,000 law enforcement communities in the United States report the NIBRS data to the FBI. Through the NCS-X program this data can be used in supporting national statistics because the NCS-X has a way of guaranteeing that data from the 5,000 can easily be manipulated thus representing the 20,000. The implementation of the NCS-X program has also improved the quality of the existing crime record management systems. Additionally, it brings all stakeholders on board for the purpose of national security and reducing rate of crimes in the country (Sandholtz, Langton, & Planty, 2013).

CONCLUSION

            NCS-X is beneficial to the implementation of the law enforcement agencies nationwide. If the NCS-X were not beneficial, the BJS would not have been seeking proposals from the UCR programs and the law enforcement communities to implement it and expand the capacity of the state in reporting incident-based crime data from the FBI’s NIBRS. Additionally, if the NCS-X program were not beneficial, the FBI and law enforcement communities would not be seeking a plan to retire the Summary Reporting System. Therefore, at the moment, the implementation of the NCS-X program is full of benefits for the law enforcement communities and the nation in general. However, as much as it will be implemented, there is a need to carry out the thorough survey and engage all stakeholders for the program to be even better for the benefits of the state in reporting the national crime. 

REFERENCES

Blumstein, A., & Wallman, J. (2006). The crime drop in America. Cambridge University Press.

Penney, T. L. (2014). Dark figure of crime (problems of estimation). The encyclopedia of              

            criminology and criminal justice.

Sandholtz, N., Langton, L., & Planty, M. (2013). Hate crime victimization, 2003-2011. US          

            Department of Justice, March, 21.

Sherman, L. W., Gottfredson, D. C., MacKenzie, D. L., Eck, J., Reuter, P., & Bushway, S. D.     

            (1998). Preventing Crime: What Works, What Doesn't, What's Promising. Research in      

            Brief. National Institute of Justice.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in custom nursing essay writing services services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for college essay writing services.