Collection systems · FBI crime statistics
Summary Reporting System(SRS)
The legacy monthly tallies, retired nationally in 2021, that counted only the most serious offence per incident.
Under the Summary Reporting System agencies filed monthly counts by offence type. It applied the hierarchy rule: an incident involving several offences was counted only as the most serious one, so a robbery during which a car was stolen was recorded solely as a robbery.
The FBI retired SRS at the start of 2021 in favour of incident-based reporting. Because the hierarchy rule suppressed lesser offences within multi-offence incidents, SRS structurally undercounts relative to the system that replaced it — which is the mechanical reason a naive SRS-to-NIBRS comparison shows a jump that never happened.
Also known as: SRS, summary reporting, hierarchy rule.
See summary reporting system in the data
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Summary Reporting System — FAQ
What is summary reporting system in crime statistics?+
The legacy monthly tallies, retired nationally in 2021, that counted only the most serious offence per incident. Under the Summary Reporting System agencies filed monthly counts by offence type. It applied the hierarchy rule: an incident involving several offences was counted only as the most serious one, so a robbery during which a car was stolen was recorded solely as a robbery.
Why does summary reporting system matter?+
The FBI retired SRS at the start of 2021 in favour of incident-based reporting. Because the hierarchy rule suppressed lesser offences within multi-offence incidents, SRS structurally undercounts relative to the system that replaced it — which is the mechanical reason a naive SRS-to-NIBRS comparison shows a jump that never happened.
Where does this crime statistics come from?+
Figures come from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program — the quarterly national trend series, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and the annual Arrests and Arson collections. Coverage depends on which agencies reported in a given period. pumsdata is independent and not affiliated with the FBI.