1110-0001 Supporting Statements B

1110-0001 Supporting Statements B.doc

Return A-Monthly Return of Offenses known to Police and Supplement to Return A-Monthly Return of Offenses Known to Police

OMB: 1110-0001

⚠️ Notice: This form may be outdated. More recent filings and information on OMB 1110-0001 can be found here:

2022-10-28 - Extension without change of a currently approved collection

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SUPPORTING STATEMENT B

1110-0001

RETURN A—MONTHLY RETURN OF OFFENSES KNOWN TO POLICE

SUPPLEMENT TO RETURN A—MONTHLY RETURN OF OFFENSES KNOWN TO POLICE

B. Statistical Methods

Response Universe

The potential respondent universe of the Return A and Supplement to Return A forms OMB No. 1110-0001, includes all United States LEAs submitting their crime statistics data via the SRS. During 2018, approximately 10,023 SRS LEAs voluntarily participated in the FBI UCR Program. The LEAs consist of federal, state, local, and tribal agencies that correlate to all population group sizes and have many diverse attributes. These agencies include: a mix of population density and degrees of urbanization; various compositions of population particularly youth concentration; population mobility with respect to residents’ mobility, commuting patterns, and transient factors; different cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics; family conditions with respect to divorce and family cohesiveness; climate; effective strength of law enforcement; policies of other components of the criminal justice system; citizens’ attitudes toward crime; and crime reporting practices of the citizenry.

The table below provides the total number of SRS agencies who are providing Return A/Supplement to Return A data.

SRS Return A/Supplement to Return A Agencies, 2018
	Population Group	Number of Agencies	Population Covered
Cities	Group I (250,000 inhabitants and more)	64	51,768,804
	Group II (100,000 to 249,999 inhabitants)	156	23,214,759
	Group III (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants)	351	24,385,423
	Group IV (25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants)	612	21,155,445
	Group V (10,000 to 24,999 inhabitants)	1,247	19,897,499
	Group VI (Less than 10,000 inhabitants)^1,2	5,092	15,076,932
Counties	Group VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)²	1,198	12,863,599
Counties	Group IX (Metropolitan County)²	1,303	52,306,310
	Total	10,023	220,668,771

¹ Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.

² Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

Out of the 10,023 agencies that voluntarily report data to the FBI UCR Program via the SRS, approximately 9,147 submit twelve months of complete data, 876 submit between one and eleven months of data, and 1,097 agencies do not submit reports to the FBI UCR Program. See chart below.

Number of months submitted	Number of Agencies
1 month	42
2 months	42
3 months	41
4 months	51
5 months	57
6 months	63
7 months	81
8 months	66
9 months	93
10 months	114
11 months	226
12 months	9,147
Nonreporting agencies	1,097
Total	10,023

Of the 10,023 participating agencies, 91.3 percent respond with twelve months of complete data. The FBI is currently undergoing a transition to move SRS agencies to the NIBRS by January 1, 2021. Sixty-two LEAs received grant money to assist in their transition to NIBRS, while 25 state UCR programs received money to help improve their RMSs to receive NIBRS data. The NIBRS is the path forward and will improve the way the nation collects, reports, analyzes, and uses its crime statistics to enable informed, tactical, and strategic decision-making.

The NIBRS reporting agencies have a higher participation rate than the SRS agencies, therefore, as SRS agencies transition to NIBRS, participation should increase. The NIBRS eases the ability for LEAs to report Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted data because it is collected within the NIBRS record layout. With the SRS, the LEAs and state UCR programs receiving the NCS-X funds to transition to NIBRS, funds will now be available to make the necessary technical changes to collect this important data.

Collection of Information Procedures

The Return A and Supplement to Return A data are collected/received from state UCR program participants on a monthly basis. The FBI UCR Program has established various time frames and deadlines for acquiring the monthly data. State UCR programs and direct contributing agencies are instructed to submit their monthly reports/submissions to the FBI by the seventh day after the close of each month. Annual deadlines are also designated in order to collect/assess receipt of monthly submissions. There are times when special circumstances may cause an agency to request an extension. The FBI UCR Program has the authority to grant these extensions. Although monthly reports are preferred by agencies, the state UCR programs, upon approval, may submit their data at intervals, e.g., monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually; this minimizes the burden to the agency.

Beginning June 15, 2020, data submitted to the FBI UCR Program will be available within the CDE on a quarterly basis, starting with January – March 2020 data. This data will be released the fifteenth day of June 2020, September 2020, December 2020, and March 2021. Caveats will be included within the CDE stating released data is subject to change.

The FBI UCR Program will ingest data submitted by the fifteenth of the month, complete data quality reviews to identify data outliers, and tag anomalies within 14 business days in preparation for publication. The first data quality reviews will be returned to contributing states on May 26, 2020.

The LEAs participating in the SRS submit Return A and Supplement to Return A data to the FBI UCR Program via electronic files or by using the Microsoft Excel Workbook Tool which contains an electronic version of the Return A–Monthly Return of Offenses Known to the Police and Supplement to Return A–Monthly Return of Offenses Known to Police.

As the Return A and Supplement to Return A data collection is intended to collect all reported Part I offense data (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) and Supplement to Return A data, monetary value of property stolen and recovered, from the LEAs in the United States, sampling methodologies are not used. National, regional, and state estimates are applied to the Return A data and are arrived at using procedures to attribute for missing or incomplete agencies. For Return A and Supplement to Return A data to be included in the Crime in the United States publication, the LEAs must have submitted information for all 12 months of the current year.

Response Rates/Nonresponse

Response rates are maximized through liaison with state UCR programs. Communications encouraging data submissions occur frequently because of the relationship between the FBI UCR Program staff and the LEAs. The FBI UCR Program staff have a strong understanding of contextual challenges agencies face in reporting valid and reliable data and assist agencies in overcoming nonresponse challenges. Currently, 82.3 percent of the FBI UCR Program SRS reporting agencies report 12 months of complete Return A data to the FBI, while 7.8 percent submit between 1–11 months of data. The remaining 9.9 percent do not participate in the Return A/Supplement to Return A data collection.

The mission of the FBI UCR Program is to acquire Return A and Supplement to Return A data, establish guidelines for the collection of such data, and publish Return A and Supplement to Return A data. Although the FBI makes every effort through its editing procedures, training practices, and correspondence to ensure the validity of the data it receives, the accuracy of the statistics depends primarily on the adherence of each contributor to the established standards of reporting.

The Criminal Justice Information Systems Committees of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) provide the FBI UCR Program with vital links to local law enforcement personnel. The IACP, as it has since the UCR Program began, represents the thousands of police departments nationwide. The NSA encourages sheriffs throughout the country to fully participate in the FBI UCR Program. Both committees serve in advisory capacities concerning the FBI UCR Program’s operation. The Association of State Uniform Crime Reporting Programs (ASUCRP) focuses on UCR issues within individual state law enforcement associations and also promotes interest in the FBI UCR Program. These organizations foster widespread and responsible use of uniform crime statistics and lend assistance to data contributors when needed.

Collection Development

The FBI has conducted the monthly Return A and Supplement to Return A information collection since the 1930s. Today, the FBI UCR Program received guidance for implementing or making changes to a data collection from the CJIS Advisory Policy Board (APB). The APB, which is organized and exists under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, was established to ensure a “shared management” concept with the nation’s law enforcement community for all criminal justice information systems managed by the CJIS Division. It ensures law enforcement has the opportunity to discuss and vote on any policy or procedural changes to the CJIS systems affecting the FBI’s ability to collect, maintain, and share information with the nationwide criminal justice community. The APB reviews policy, technical, and operational issues related to the CJIS services and recommends to the FBI Director appropriate changes. In addition to the APB, the CJIS Advisory Process also includes five regional working groups and many subcommittees, including the UCR Subcommittee. The CJIS Advisory Process is an effective way to discuss proposed concepts and develop the shared systems that support law enforcement and criminal justice agencies.

The working groups review topic papers on operational, policy, and technical issues related to the CJIS Division programs and policies and make recommendations to the APB or one of its subcommittees. All fifty states, as well as the District of Columbia, the United States territories, federal agencies, tribal representatives, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are organized into five working groups. Working group meetings are conducted as closed meetings and take place once each cycle, with two cycles per year.

The UCR Subcommittee is comprised of APB members and other UCR subject-matter experts. The UCR Subcommittee was established to review recommendations for the consideration of the entire APB. The chair of the APB, in consultation with the Designated Federal Officer (DFO), may invite any governmental or quasi-governmental entity who is involved in CJIS activities to attend any meeting of the APB Subcommittee for the purpose of consultation or providing information. Subcommittee meetings take place at least once each cycle.

The APB meets at the end of each cycle or twice during each calendar year. A notice of these meetings is published in the Federal Register, and the meetings are conducted as an open session unless determined otherwise by the DFO. The APB is composed of 35 executive representatives from criminal justice agencies and national security agencies throughout the United States.

The current Return A and Supplement to Return A forms remain the same, and therefore, require no additional testing. No comments or suggestions of problems with the form have been reported through the APB working groups, UCR Subcommittee, CJIS APB, or the ASUCRP. These groups meet frequently throughout each year and are dedicated to improving the collection, use, and utility of crime data as reported through the FBI UCR Program and all state and local crime reporting programs.