This report looks at the prevalence and concentration of shoplifting in two major cities—Los Angeles and Chicago—before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

NIBRS Manual

We have accomplished a lot together in our first five years, but we are just getting started. Will you support the Council as we build bridges across ideological divides and craft consensus for solutions?

The Council advances understanding of the criminal justice policy choices facing the nation and builds consensus for solutions that enhance safety and justice for all.

The group was welcomed by Amy Solomon, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs, who encouraged the group to offer its best thinking about how to make crime reporting more timely, accurate, and complete. The group then heard from justice data expert Paul Wormeli and working group member Janet Lauritsen, Professor Emerita at University of Missouri-St. Louis. The two summarized the history of crime data reporting in the U.S. and outlined recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Panel on Modernizing the Nation’s Crime Statistics that issued reports on this subject in 2016 and 2018.

Uniform Crime Report

A major data loss was discovered in January 2021, and a UK Home Office press release provides information on the extent of the loss and the work to restore the data.[12]

Members also heard from the group’s federal liaisons, Alex Piquero, Director of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), and Deputy Assistant Director Brian Griffith, of the Law Enforcement and Technology Services Branch of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. The two liaisons discussed the significant investments that have been made over the past two years to enhance data capacities, including several dozen new employees at BJS. Piquero and Griffith discussed efforts to accelerate NIBRS reporting and crime data publication, the need for standards, and the need to build robust partnerships with researchers and states in order to enhance the value of NIBRS.

A number of criminal justice partners are linked to the PNC, giving them access to the information held on the computer. About 5,000 checks are made each week through the ‘Jurors’ link, which allows Crown Courts to check whether a proposed juror has a criminal record. Previously, the Courts Service struggled to meet its target of randomly checking 20 per cent of potential jury members.

nationalincident-basedreporting systemdata

Because of changes to legislation on 29 May 2013 DBS removed certain specified old and minor offences from criminal record certificates issued from this date. The filtering rules[10] and the list of offences that will never be filtered[11] are available on the DBS website.

With the growth of trans-national criminality, the PNC was linked to the Schengen Information System (SIS) which shares certain information Europe-wide. This is no longer the case since the UK left the European Union in 2020.

In 2016 it was announced that the PNC would be decommissioned at the same time as the PND contract expired in 2019 and under the guise of the National Law Enforcement Data Programme, a replacement would combine both systems; for the first time merging intelligence and conviction history against one nominal record. The National Law Enforcement Data Service would provide a less police-centric platform servicing all public enforcement agencies ranging from the Border Force, HM Revenue and Customs, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Charity Commission.

Since its inception in 1974, the PNC has undergone numerous changes that were gradually introduced. The most notable was the introduction of the Phoenix (Police and Home Office Enhanced Names Index) in 1995.[5] This format has been retained to the present day.[6]

PIAP has defined the following organisations as non-police and has agreed that authorised users within these organisations can have Names file only access commensurate with their previously stated and agreed business needs.

NIBRS vs UCR

Military veterans have more than twice the risk of suicide death as non-veterans. This brief examines a federal program designed to identify veterans with the highest suicide risk in order to provide enhanced outreach and support. It finds that the prediction model had low accuracy for identifying veterans who died by suicide.

SummaryReporting System

The Police National Computer started holding nominal information based on the computerisation of criminal records held by the Metropolitan Police and other police forces in the late 1970s. These CRO records could be accessed online in real-time by all UK police forces via the "Names" applications.[1] The PNC now consists of several databases available 24 hours a day, giving access to information of national and local matters.[2] As of 18 January 2021, Kit Malthouse said that there are 13 million person records,[3] 58.5 million driver records, and 62.6 million vehicle records stored on the PNC.[4] The PNC is currently directly managed by the Home Office. Between 2007 and 2012, it was maintained by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) which inherited the activities of the now disbanded Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO).

NIBRS training

In 2005 the only back-up server was located next to Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal in Buncefield, which was the scene of a major civil emergency when it burned to the ground in December 2005. According to the Home Office the location had been assessed as low-risk notwithstanding that the site was 100 yards (91 m) from a disaster hazard and the site and its surroundings burned to the ground.[7]

Requests for access to PNC are decided upon by the PNC Information Access Panel (PIAP). The members of the panel are the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC), the Association of Police Authorities, and the Home Office. Delegated or subcontracted users exist.

NIBRS data download

In order to ensure that only relevant data is visible to each agency, user-based access controls will limit the segments of records which an agency can access to the very minimum they require to achieve their aims.

PNC operators undergo initial training to operate the system which usually consists of a five-day course to view data and conduct simple queries. Further courses are available to expand the user's access level to update and conduct more in-depth queries. Penalties for misuse of the PNC and unlawful access of data are severe; it will likely lead to dismissal and sometimes a court appearance for breaching the Data Protection Act 1998.

In June, the Crime Trends Working Group convened in Washington, D.C., for an all-day discussion on the Justice Department’s infrastructure for reporting, accessing, and using nationwide crime trend data. The conversation featured a series of presentations on obstacles to implementing the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which replaced the nation’s nearly century-old Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s Summary Reporting System in 2021.

This data is separate to any data a local force may hold on an individual e.g. statements, summons files, traffic fixed penalties, etc. This information can be requested through the relevant local force through a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act 2018.

NationalCrime Victimization Survey

PND is not a replacement for PNC; as of 2023[update] it holds 2 billion searchable records, and captures data from 220 different systems from 53 contributing police forces and law enforcement agencies. It is operated by the Canadian company CGI Group, on behalf of the Home Office.[15] CGI bought out the original PND operators Logica in 2012.[16]

Representatives of small and large law enforcement departments and state criminal justice agencies provided a comprehensive overview of the transition to NIBRS from their perspectives. They described obstacles that continue to challenge many states and local law enforcement agencies and identified practices that are helping accelerate the transition. Among the points made and discussed were the following:

The Police National Computer is one of the main sources of information accessed when a Disclosure and Barring Service check is made. The Police National Computer holds indefinite records of a person's convictions and cautions which will be revealed in a Disclosure and Barring Service check. While of use in informing prospective employers as to the suitability of an applicant for a particular job, the information disclosed can show information which the applicant may think is of no relevance, such as a juvenile conviction for shoplifting where the applicant is now a thirty-year-old individual and applying for a job in a bank. Concerns have been expressed that the indefinite retention of old convictions and cautions is unwarranted.[9]

Delivery of the PND (Police National Database) was the first recommendation of the Bichard report. Contractor Logica was awarded a contract of £75M to build and deliver the PND in 2007, but this was not commenced until May 2010 when the first forces began to load their data on to the new system. In November 2010, Northumbria Police became the first force to connect to the PND and to begin to use the new system. From June 2011 all Home Office forces were connected and using the PND.[14]

The Police National Computer (PNC) is a database used by law enforcement organisations across the United Kingdom and other non-law enforcement agencies. Originally developed in the early 1970s, PNC1 went 'live' in 1974, providing UK police forces with online access to the lost/stolen vehicle database. The vehicle owners application quickly followed, giving the police online access to the names/addresses of every vehicle owner in the UK.

Working Group chair Rick Rosenfeld, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri St-Louis, described significant opportunities to improve the Crime Data Explorer, the FBI’s current public interface for its crime data. Working Group members discussed how researchers, policymakers, and the public have different crime data interests and need to be able to access NIBRS data in different ways. Rosenfeld also emphasized the need to make NIBRS data more timely.

Any person now has the right to view their PNC record, if any, online or via post, for free at www.acro.police.uk.[17] This is done online where the user presents a list of their addresses for the previous 10 years and an upload of an ID document, but this can also be presented offline. The results can be sent either by post or via email.[18]

Examining data for the nation’s three largest cities through fall of 2024, this report finds that shoplifting levels remain higher than pre-pandemic rates. It also highlights two conflicting sources of federal data on the crime.

The PNC is based on a Fujitsu BS2000/OSD SE700 mainframe with recent PNC applications held on UNIX servers. There are around 26,000 directly connected terminals and 25,000 terminals which are connected via local police force computer systems. The mainframe is connected to the end user by a multitude of ways, for high volume users (i.e. other police forces) via secure IP network, for low volume users a secure dial-up link provided by Cable & Wireless. Another connection method is via an X.25 packet-switched network; this method is being phased out. Databases for vehicles and driver licences are copied from the DVLA databases in the early morning (there is no service loss when an update is in progress). The mainframe server is located at the Hendon Data Centre with back-up servers located around the UK.