Offenses

Mutually exclusive offenses

Each offense must be its own distinct crime, not just part of another offense. For example, if a Sexual Assault has occurred, reporting an Assault offense in addition would be redundant since every Sexual Assault contains an element of assault. Assault would be considered in this case a “lesser included” offense.

In contrast, if an offender sexually assaults a victim during the course of a Robbery, both the Robbery and the applicable Sexual Assault should be reported.

If an Assault distinctly occurred separate to a Sexual Assault, such as hours apart, two incidents need to be created. If the two incidents are left as one, only the Sexual Assault will be counted and the Assault will not be, skewing our statistics.

Some pairs or groups of offenses cannot have occurred to the same victim in the same incident. These are “mutually exclusive” offenses. For example, 11A Rape and 36A Incest cannot have both occurred in the same incident to the same victim because 36A Incest requires that both parties consented.

Just as with lesser included offenses, if someone consented on one occasion but not on another, two distinct incidents have occurred.

IBR codes don’t consider charges

Due to the fact that our data is sent to the FBI for a nationwide representation of crime and state laws vary, the development of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) required establishing standardized definitions of crimes. This means that even if we in Virginia would classify a crime differently under our laws or even decline to charge the offender, we should still code it according to IBR guidelines for standardization. For example, the Virginia criminal code 18.2-103 includes both 23C Shoplifting (Larceny) as well as 26A Obtaining by False Pretenses (Fraud) because switching price tags is considered to be a form of fraud under IBR guidelines, rather than a form of larceny. There are some exceptions to this rule of not coding according to Virginia law, which are noted in the definition pages of the applicable offenses.