CHEYENNE — Before the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Judiciary Committee Thursday, Division of Criminal Investigation officials announced, of 58 law enforcement agencies in Wyoming, 40 are in compliance with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Incident-Based Reporting System. Both the Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office and Sheridan Police Department report crime statistics to NIBRS, according to documents presented to the judiciary committee Thursday.
“Law enforcement as a whole in Wyoming right now is doing a good job at becoming NIBRS compliant,” said DCI Interim Director Forrest “Frosty” Williams before the judiciary committee.
Understanding the prevalence and types of crimes committed in a community is essential to formulating good public policy, evaluating existing crime-reduction programs and developing law enforcement funding requests or new criminal-legal programs, Rep. Art Washut, R-Casper, explained to the committee.
Unfortunately, Washut said, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report Summary Reporting System, the primary repository of crime statistics in the U.S., does not provide a comprehensive look at crime in America or in individualized municipalities. For instance, Washut explained, SRS only includes the most serious crime committed during a single incident, even if the incident involved several criminal acts.
SRS also only offers arrest statistics — as opposed to statistics on convictions, imposed sentences, recidivism and other meaningful criminal justice data points — on “Part II” crimes, or crimes the FBI considers less serious. According to the FBI’s offense definitions, these Part II crimes include drug violations, forgery, embezzlement, vandalism and driving under the influence, among other offenses.
Because of the limitations of SRS, Washut said, the FBI cannot create an accurate picture of crime in the U.S. or in Wyoming. As such, Washut explained, the FBI planned to eliminate SRS and initiate a complete switch to NIBRS in early 2021.
NIBRS records data on more than 50 criminal offenses and can include up to 10 offenses committed during a single incident, Washut said. According to the FBI, NIBRS also collects more detailed information on the circumstances surrounding crimes, including relationships between victims and offenders, demographic and location data and whether offenses are gang- or cyber-crime-related, among other important metrics.
The primary problem with NIBRS is agency participation rates. Although the technology was developed in the late 1980s, the first NIBRS report was not generated until 2011, Washut said, and only about 32% of American law enforcement agencies participated that year. According to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer dashboard, many states — particularly high-population states like Florida, California, New York and New Jersey where changing crime reporting policies is particularly cumbersome — still do not report crime data to NIBRS.
Wyoming, however, became NIBRS compliant in 2018. Wyoming's nearly 70% reporting record remains well above the national average of about 40% of agencies reporting, Williams said. This is well above the national average of about 40% of agencies reporting, according to Williams.
Law enforcement agencies in Sheridan, too, are reporting to NIBRS. Anyone can access SPD and SCSO crime data via the FBI’s online dashboard.
According to SPD Administrative Services Manager Jennifer Shassetz, SPD started testing NIBRS reporting in November 2020 and fully implemented it in May 2021. The implementation of NIBRS has gone “very well” at the department, according to SPD Chief Travis Koltiska. In fact, Koltiska said, SPD was one of the first departments in Wyoming to practice NIBRS reporting.
Sheridan County Sheriff Allen Thompson said SCSO also became NIBRS-compliant earlier this year, after the office’s NIBRS technician was trained last year.
“So far, so good,” Thompson said of the NIBRS rollout process at his agency.
Statewide and locally, however, there is still more work to be done to become NIBRS compliant.
Although most non-compliant agencies are small-town police departments, some major Wyoming law enforcement agencies — namely the Wyoming Highway Patrol — still do not report crime data to NIBRS. Williams said WHP is currently working with their data management contractor to become compliant with the records system but has not yet adhered to NIBRS requirements.
The time-consuming process of entering NIBRS data has created problems for many Wyoming agencies. It takes about 30 minutes for a clerk to create one NIBRS-caliber incident report, said Crook County Sheriff Jeff Hodge before the judiciary committee.
This issue, however, has not caused too many delays locally. Although inputting data into NIBRS is certainly more time consuming, Koltiska said, SPD has been able to keep up with NIBRS reporting because a module on its case management software streamlines data entry, albeit without removing humans from the process.
So far, Thompson said, the sheriff’s office has not had to hire additional staff to meet NIBRS data-entry requirements because it is one of the smaller agencies reporting statistics to NIBRS. But, the sheriff said, SCSO may look into purchasing software like SPD’s to make the data-entry process more efficient in the future.
DCI officials will report on Wyoming’s NIBRS compliance before the judiciary committee again in spring 2022.
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