A robbery is a robbery is a robbery? Exploring crime specificity in official police incident data

Abstract

ABSTRACT Police crime data guide police operations, direct funding, underpin theory testing and policy evaluation, aide private sector decisions, and inform the public. Those applications would benefit from greater crime specificity. The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) should improve police crime data specificity. Using robbery incident data (n = 1,341) with NIBRS variables and narrative reports from the Cincinnati Police Department and qualitative analysis, this study identified thirteen robbery subtypes in the data. Tables and data visualizations demonstrate the same thirteen robbery subtypes cannot be identified using just NIBRS variables. Rather the qualitative narrative reports are most informative. While an improvement, NIBRS data are unlikely to increase the crime specificity police crime data users need. Police crime data users are urged to think carefully about what official crime data measures are used when testing theory, conducting crime analysis, evaluating policy, and so on. Recommendations for improving police data recording practices are also offered.