Justice Analysis Review Incidents Cleared by Law Enforcement 2020-2022.pdf
Law enforcement agencies use standardized reporting systems to support the analysis of reported criminal offenses, including whether an incident has been resolved and how. In 2019, North Carolina agencies adopted the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a comprehensive system developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. NIBRS is voluntarily used by N.C. law enforcement agencies to document incidents that involve offenses within their jurisdictions.
When a crime is reported to law enforcement, an incident report is created, and reports are submitted by the participating agency to NIBRS. An incident is defined as one or more offenses committed by the same offender(s) at the same time and place. The clearance status of each incident can be determined based on arrestee or administrative information within the incident report.
Clearances should not be taken as an indication of law enforcement performance or effectiveness. Rather, the data presented here provides insight into incident- and offense-level clearance reporting. This publication presents an analysis of procedures and time to clear offense-level NIBRS data.