Question
How are multiple properties represented in a single incident in an NIBRS XML submission?
Answer
Any crime may have multiple properties attached to it. Within NIBRS, these are grouped together into blocks that share a common property type (e.g. money, automobiles, etc) and loss type (e.g. stolen, recovered, seized, etc). For example, suppose that in an incident, $200 of cash was stolen along with a $1000 wedding ring and a $500 necklace. Of these, only the wedding ring has been recovered.
In the NIBRS submission, create an <Item> tag for each block. In the example above, this would result in three <Item> tags, so one for each of:
a) $200 of stolen money
b) $1500 of stolen jewelry
c) $1000 of recovered jewelry
In some states (e.g. TN, MO and VA), it is necessary to link each property/drug to an offense. To do this, put a unique ID onto each <Item> tag and then associate it with the offense using the <ItemOffenseAssociation> tag at the bottom of the incident.
In the most complicated example for these states, suppose that there are two offenses (two different types of larceny for example) and there was money stolen for each offense. In this case, the submission will need to have two <Item> tags, one with the amount of money stolen in Offense1 and the other with the amount stolen with Offense2. They would both have the same property description, but they would be linked to different offenses in separate <ItemOffenseAssociation> tags.