Agency Maximizes Power of Data With IBR
August 20, 2020 by Kate Nadolski
When making a big change, having support is helpful. For one Louisiana agency, that big change was for law enforcement agencies in the state to shift from Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) to the now mandatory Incident Based Reporting (IBR) standards.
This mandatory change requires all agencies in the state to report each one of a perpetrator’s offenses, as opposed to only reporting the top offense under UCR.
Agencies must comply with IBR standards to receive state and federal funding. The purpose behind the switch from UCR to IBR is to provide better, more efficient crime statistics, allowing agencies to properly identify trends and combat crime.
The Union Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana is working hard to transition from UCR to IBR. Sergeant and IT Director, Kylie Henson, said the department really struggled with a system they used in the past that crashed frequently while writing out reports. This made it difficult to consistently report the proper data and follow state guidelines.
To combat these issues, the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office implemented a user-friendly records management system and started their transition to IBR. While the agency is still in the process of fully implementing the new processes and utilizing their public safety solutions, Henson said the end-user experience has been greatly improved.
“I think this system makes reporting IBR very easy and it’s user-friendly,” Henson said.
According to Henson, the system helps officers fill in the data step by step, ensuring all entries are correct by using color codes.
“When doing a report, there’s a tab for IBR,” Henson explained. “The tab turns red if any errors are entered, and it tells you exactly what the error is so you can go right in there and fix it.”
As of August 2020, the Union Parish Sheriff’s Office is still in their testing phase with their new system and IBR processes, so they aren’t sending data to the state just yet. However, they’re using this transition period to familiarize themselves with the records management system to streamline this mandatory process, to in turn, make things easier.
“With IBR, everything needs to be reported,” Henson said. “For instance, when there is violence against a law enforcement officer, that will now always be properly documented thanks to the ease of use of these tools.”
The Union Parish Sheriff’s Office will continue their transition to IBR and plan to be switched over entirely by January 2021.