The state of Texas is now collecting more data for incidents involving family violence and drug seizures, which will require the submission of Segment Level 8 with incident reports. The purpose of these changes is to provide the state of Texas with more accurate information that will result in an improved statistical analysis of crime. Law agencies that are participating in the TX NIBRS program will need to fill out a few additional data fields to provide the required information collected by the state of Texas. More changes are coming to the TX NIBRS program in early 2019 as the state will begin collecting more information in cases involving sexual violence. For now, you need to familiarize yourself with Segment Level 8 and with the new data fields you will need to code in cases involving family violence or drug seizures.
You will need to submit Segment Level 8 as part of a complete incident report when:
If a case involves family violence, you will have to code a single data field as Y on Segment 8. The nature of the relationship between the offender and the victim is to be reported on Segment Level 4. Note that you cannot code this field as Y if Segment Level 4 indicates a non-family or unknown relationship. If a drug seizure case involves more than three different types of drugs, you will need to report the three main drug types on Segment Level 3. This is the data the FBI will use in the context of the NIBRS program. However, you would enter ‘X’ in the third field to indicate that more than three drug types were seized, and add Segment Level 8 to the incident report to list the additional drug types seized and satisfy the new Texas crime reporting requirements. You will also find additional fields for reporting the estimated drug quantity seized, the number of marijuana plants seized, information about where the plants were cultivated, the number of clandestine labs seized, the type of drugs manufactured and the quantities of precursor chemicals seized.
Here is a breakdown of the fields you will find on Segment Level 8:
Specifications for Segment Level 9 will become available in early 2019. The purpose of this segment is to capture additional data specific to incidents involving sexual violence. We will add these fields in our software so you can capture all the data required by the state of Texas and will keep you up to date as soon as the specifications are released. Remember to include Segment Level 8 if an incident report includes family violence, or if a drug seizure case includes any of the following: three or more drug types, marijuana plants, clandestine lab(s), or precursor chemicals. Contact the ARMS support team if you have any questions about filling out Segment Level 8.
ARMS is proudly powered by WordPress