The Simi Valley Police Department previously utilized the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, which has been a data collection method for US law enforcement agencies since its inception in 1932. In December 2022, the Simi Valley Police Department transitioned to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
This change aimed to enhance the quality of data collection, aligning with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) updated method of crime data reporting. NIBRS offers more comprehensive information compared to UCR, in one aspect, through its ability to distinguish between completed and attempted crimes—a distinction largely lacking in UCR. To clarify, most crimes that were previously omitted from FBI reports due to being attempted are now included, regardless of whether the crime was successfully completed or not.
Another notable difference is that while UCR focuses solely on the most severe crimes, regardless of simultaneous occurrences, NIBRS provides a comprehensive breakdown of all reported offenses within a given incident. This is a significant departure from how crime statistics were previously presented. The new NIBRS reporting method will give the initial appearance of an increase in crime since UCR omitted all lesser crimes in an incident. As a benefit, the additional detailed crime incident data will provide a greater analytic capability than our previous Uniform Crime Reporting standard.
In light of the transition to NIBRS and the modified approach in reporting and tracking crime data as compared to UCR data reporting, it is important to note that obtaining an accurate depiction of crime percentage changes utilizing NIBRS data reporting will not be possible until 2025. Please refer to the attached NIBRS crime statistics for Simi Valley.
