Assessing the Representativeness of NIBRS Arrest Data

This article examines the coverage of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) arrest data as of 2016. We use NIBRS and Uniform Crime Report (UCR), Summary Reporting System on persons arrested. We examine the correspondence of arrests measures between the UCR and NIBRS for overall arrests, and arrests by sex, race, and age. We found that NIBRS arrest data are a close match to UCR data overall and the differences across demographic measures are very slight.