Assessing Differences in Measurement of Nonfatal Firearm Crime in the Uniform Crime Report Summary Reporting System and National Incident-Based Reporting System

Data collection processes of fatal firearm violence are well established. These processes are far more fragmented for nonfatal firearm violence-specifically injuries sustained in the commission of a crime. Until recently, no national databases systemically tracked nonfatal gunshot wounds. In this study, we aimed to enhance understanding of this subject by assessing concordance between measures of nonfatal firearm crimes from two national data sources: the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report Summary Reporting System (UCR-SRS) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). We obtained data from 85 law enforcement agencies that served large jurisdictions and reported data to the UCR-SRS and NIBRS for at least 10 years between 2000 and 2020. We calculated annual ratios and cross-sectional and temporal correlations between NIBRS incidents with a firearm resulting in an injury and UCR firearm-related crimes for aggravated assaults and robberies. We performed a hierarchical cluster analysis to identify agencies with similar clusters of correlations between the two measures. We found that approximately 87% of UCR-reported incidents with a firearm had no reported victim that experienced a likely gunshot injury. Among agencies, 60% exhibited low positive to negative correlations between NIBRS and UCR for at least one of the two crime categories. Our findings show the difficulty in estimating the incidence and trends of nonfatal firearm violence with crime data. Advancements made by NIBRS are critical to collect more comprehensive data on nonfatal firearm violence, but gaps in participation and discrepancies in reporting across agencies must be addressed to realize the data system's potential. Keywords: Firearm violence, Nonfatal shooting, Crime reporting.