DOI: 10.3886/e118281v11-191434
title: Jacob Kaplan's Concatenated Files: National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Data, 1991-2024

description: <b>Version 11 release notes:<br></b>Adds 2023-2024 dataMakes some changes to offense description (e.g. change description of "fondling") and victim-offender relationship values to be consistent with FBI changes. This affects all years, not just 2023-2024.Adds .parquet file formats. <b>Version 10 release notes:<br></b>Updates 2021 Property Segment and Window Recovered Property Segment to fix issue in older version of FBI data where the drug type column incorrectly had the values of the quantity unit column, which then made every subsequent column incorrect. This led to strange behavior such as zero marijuana values and an incredibly high number of opium values because opium has the value of "G" and "GM" for gram is extremely common as a quantity unit. This was an error in the FBI Master File I downloaded shortly after the 2021 data was released and was fixed when I downloaded the current version of the file which has a date of 8/17/2023 in the zip file. Both files were downloaded from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer website. Thank you to Roland Neil for informing me about this issue. <b><br></b><b>Version 9 release notes:<br></b>Adds 2022 data<b><br></b><b>Version 8 release notes:<br></b>Fixes issue where 2021 Property Segment data was excluded. Thank you to Uriel Lomeli for telling me about this issue.<br><b>Version 7 release notes:</b>Adds 2021 data.<br><b>Version 6 release notes:</b>Adds batch header segments for all years. <br><b></b><b>Version 5 release notes:</b>Adds 2020 data<b>Version 4 release notes:</b>Fix bug where most years had arrestee and property were incorrectly window arrestee and window property segments.Changes R files from .rda to .rds.<br><b>Version 3 release notes:</b><b></b>Adds 2019 data<b>Version 2 release notes:</b>Changes release notes description, does not change data.These data are the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data for years 1991-2018. NIBRS data are incident-level data that have highly detailed information for each crime that is reported to the police agency. This data has 10 segments. Each segment has different data about the crime. <br><br>AdministrativeBasic information about the crime incident - this is basically metadata about the other segments for this crime. This includes the date of the crime, the number of offense segments, the number of victim segments, the number of offender segments, the number of arrestee segments, if the crime was cleared exceptionally and (if it was) what date it was cleared. <br>ArresteeArrestee-level information for those who are arrested. This includes demographics (age, sex, race, ethnicity), the date of the arrest (can be different than the date of the crime), what weapon (if any) was used, and the outcome of the case if the arrestee was a juvenile. <br>Group B Arrest ReportsArrestee-level information for those who are arrested for Group B crimes. This includes the same variables as the arrestee segment. <br>OffenderOffender-level information for each offender. Includes offender demographics (age, sex, race, ethnicity).OffenseDetailed information about each crime. Includes the weapon used (if any), the location of the crime, if the offender was intoxicated (including drugs and alcohol), and what their bias motivation (if any) was (if there is one, this would be considered a hate crime). <br>PropertyInformation about property involved in the crime (i.e. drugs or stolen property). This includes the value of the property, what type of the property it was, when it was recovered. For drugs, this includes the drug and its quantity. <br>VictimVictim-level information for each victim of a crime. Includes victim demographics (age, sex, race, ethnicity), injury, and relationship to the offender(s).<br>Window ArresteeWindows segments have the same columns as their non-window counterparts and are incidents that occurred prior to the year of data or prior to when the agency started reporting to NIBRS.<br>Window Exceptional ClearanceWindows segments have the same columns as their non-window counterparts 
and are incidents that occurred prior to the year of data or prior to 
when the agency started reporting to NIBRS.Window PropertyWindows segments have the same columns as their non-window counterparts 
and are incidents that occurred prior to the year of data or prior to 
when the agency started reporting to NIBRS.<br>Due to the large file size, each year is its own file. All segment headers are available except for the batch headers. What I did here was read the data into R and save it as R and Stata files. No other changes to the data were made. <br>The data was downloaded as NIBRS Master Files for each year from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer website - https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/downloads-and-docs.<br><br><br>
description: Crimes in the United States<br>. Smallest Geographic Unit: Police agency