The Records Clerk at the Madison County Sheriff’s Office said the new crime statistics reporting system that began last year is highly inaccurate, however fraud is at a high and larceny cases have dropped in Madison County.
The FBI phased out the standardized Summary Reporting System (SRS) of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, which cities and jurisdictions used to report crime offenses to the federal government, at the beginning of 2021. The old system was replaced with the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). With the change of system, data is difficult to compare to previous years, but Records Clerk Kathy Kehle said it is inaccurate and she’s not sure why that is.
“The new NIBRS system that the FBI uses is very inaccurate,” Kehle said. “It is only showing us at 10.66 percent clearance rate for 2021 and we are actually at 81 percent clearance rate.”
Despite the error in clearance rate, the NIBRS has more to offer by showing the number of violations that have occurred in different categories of crime. While Ridgeland had 529 drug and narcotic violations and Madison had 308, the Sheriff’s Office only reported five, although law enforcement says they are cracking down on drug violations due to the fentanyl epidemic that is taking place throughout the country. Kehle attributed this low number to confidentiality.
“We don’t enter all of our drug reports,” Kehle said. “Well, we do enter our drug reports, but they are kept confidential because many of our drug arrests become informants and, by law, we cannot divulge our information.”
She said there were more drug cases but they just weren’t reflected in those numbers. She said the actual numbers “probably” line up closer with the cities’ numbers.
“Maybe not quite as much – we probably have a little less than what the city has,” Kehle said.
DUIs jump out as the highest number of cases in the county’s 2021 stats with 688 violations. Kehle said she wasn’t familiar with the DUI cases and couldn’t comment on the high number. However, she said the most concerning category to her is fraud.
“We have a lot more fraud cases in Madison County than I have ever seen,” Kehle said.
The NIBRS report states there were 14 cases of swindling, three of credit card or teller machine, three of impersonation, and nine of wire fraud.
As far as areas of improvement, she said larceny cases have lowered. There were five cases of shoplifting, 29 of theft from a building, 25 of theft from a vehicle, six of theft of a motor vehicle part or accessory, 15 of vehicle thefts and 57 cases of all other larceny.
She said Sheriff Randy Tucker has been happy with 2021’s report.
“The Sheriff is pleased with everything so far,” Kehle said. “As far as the public, I have no idea.”
The Sheriff did not respond to a request for an interview regarding 2021’s crime report.
