Category: FBI

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Hate Crime Data Helps Law Enforcement Address Threat

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Hate crimes have a devastating impact on victims, families, and communities. While investigating hate crimes is a top priority of the FBI’s civil rights program, the FBI also works to collect reliable data on these crimes.

The FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics data collection includes hate crime data voluntarily reported by federal, state, local, tribal, and college and university law enforcement agencies nationwide.

Dependable data help law enforcement and the government to:

  • Identify challenges and direct resources to combat these crimes;
  • Support crime victims;
  • Give leaders and the public information to understand hate crimes in their communities;
  • Share information among law enforcement agencies; and
  • Provide states with hate crime information by location, volume, and type.

The collection dates back to 1990, when Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act. The Hate Crime Statistics Act and its amendments specify the types of bias reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as: race/ethnicity/ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity.

Hate Crime Reporting

A hate crime is a crime like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting free speech and civil liberties.

Law enforcement agencies report a bias crime to UCR only if an investigation finds objective facts to show the crime was bias-motivated. For UCR purposes, a law enforcement agency’s investigation determines if a crime was a hate crime, not findings of a coroner, court, jury, or prosecutor.

Possible Signs of a Hate Crime

It is sometimes difficult for investigators to know with certainty if a crime was the result of bias. Certain details may indicate a bias motivation in a crime, such as:

  • The offender and the victim were of different protected categories, such as race, religion, or disability.
  • The offender said or wrote something indicating a bias.
  • The investigators found bias-related drawings, markings, symbols, graffiti, or items at the crime scene. (For example, a swastika was painted on the door of a synagogue.)
  • The victim was engaged in activities related to their protected category.
  • The incident coincided with a holiday or a significant date relating to a protected category.

How Law Enforcement Agencies Collect and Report Hate Crimes

The hate crime data collection process begins at the local agency level when an officer responds to the alleged hate crime. When gathering hate crime data, law enforcement agencies use a two-tiered process.

The first-level officer determines if there may be a bias motive. The second-level officer or unit reviews the facts and determines whether a hate crime occurred. Then, the second-level officer or unit submits the hate crime incident to the agency’s records management personnel, who compile the crime data and submit it to the FBI.

Hate Crime Statistics Publications

The UCR Program publishes hate crime statistics each November. The Hate Crime master files and downloads are available on the Crime Data Explorer. Requests for hate crime data files may be sent to crimestatsinfo@fbi.gov.

Why Agencies Should Participate

The UCR Program relies on state and local agencies to submit hate crime data. Reporting this data demonstrates agencies’ openness and transparency with the communities they serve. Reliable statistics help the FBI to provide a representative picture of hate crime to inform, educate, and strengthen communities.

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FBI Releases 2019 NIBRS Crime Data

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

On December 9, the FBI released detailed data on nearly 7.7 million criminal offenses reported via the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) in 2019.

The Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s latest report, NIBRS, 2019, includes data about victims, known offenders, and relationships for offenses reported in 23 categories with 52 offenses. It also presents arrest data for those crimes, as well as 10 additional categories for which only arrest data is collected.

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CJIS Link

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Get the latest news in the CJIS Link, a long-running newsletter for law enforcement that is now an online-only publication. The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division operates programs and services for the law enforcement, national security, and intelligence communities 24/7. The CJIS Link provides information about:

  • How CJIS systems can help agencies solve crimes
  • New initiatives and technologies
  • Upgrades and changes regarding CJIS systems
  • The work of the CJIS Advisory Policy Board

Stay Linked

Subscribe to e-mail alerts
(check the CJIS Link box under the publications category)

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(Provide feedback, a success story, or an article idea)

Topic Index

Use the filter below to search CJIS Link articles by the following topics:

  • Biometrics and Next Generation Identification (NGI)
  • Collaborations
  • Law Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP)
  • Law Enforcement Resources
  • National Crime Information Center (NCIC)
  • National Data Exchange (N-DEx)
  • National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
  • National Threat Operations Center (NTOC)
  • Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
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Uniform Crime Reporting Program: Still Vital After 90 Years

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles exploring the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as it reaches its 90th year. Currently, the FBI produces four annual publications from data provided by more than 18,000 federal, state, county, city, university and college, and tribal law enforcement agencies voluntarily participating in the UCR program. In the coming weeks, additional data collections will be featured. 

The Jazz Age: Summary Reporting System (SRS)

During the 1920s, American society underwent profound changes. The Roaring Twenties brought voting rights for women, the rapid growth of popular entertainment for the masses, and the advent of the automotive industry. The decade also brought a Constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture or sale of alcohol, creating a thriving black market that led to the rise of crime bosses like Al Capone and Lucky Luciano.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) responded to the increase of all types of crime throughout the country by proposing a way to monitor crime on a national level. In 1927, using a grant, the IACP formed the Committee on Uniform Crime Records, which was tasked with developing a system for law enforcement agencies to report crime data.

By 1929, the IACP had developed a system to classify and report crimes and recommended that the Bureau of Investigation—which became the FBI in 1935—administer the program. The Bureau had already been working to centralize criminal identification records from across the nation, so this new endeavor seemed like a natural fit.

The IACP published the first Uniform Crime Reports bulletin in January 1930. It included reported crimes from 400 cities and 43 states. It was a remarkable feat, considering that the IACP had established the guidelines only two months before. On June 11, 1930, Congress authorized the Bureau to collect, compile, and distribute crime statistics via the SRS data collection, including statistics on murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and auto theft. Because of the need for simplicity, SRS aggregated the figures and counted offenses according to a “hierarchy rule” that only counted one most serious offense per incident.

Participation in SRS increased to:

  • 1,400 agencies by 1934
  • 5,700 agencies by 1956 and
  • 16,659 by 2018.

Today, the FBI publishes SRS statistics in Crime in the United States, with online publications dating back to the 1995 reporting year.

In the decades since the development of SRS, the nature of crime has become more sophisticated, and the limitations of the reporting system have become more evident. Consequently, the FBI will retire SRS after this year and collect crime statistics only through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). However, the FBI will continue to convert NIBRS data into the SRS format to maintain trends for several years.

The Modern Age: National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) 

NIBRS originated in 1985, when the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics collaborated on Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, a report aimed at bringing crime statistics into the electronic era. The blueprint called for the development of a more modern crime statistics reporting system that would gather more complicated data than SRS and capitalize on advances in data technology. This more modern system became NIBRS.

Superior to SRS, NIBRS collects incident-based data like weapon usage and location types on 52 categories of offenses, plus arrest data on 10 categories of offenses. NIBRS data is not aggregated, meaning that the totals can be divided into subtotals, such as the number of homicides committed with a certain type of firearm or the number of crimes committed against juveniles at a certain time of day. And with no hierarchy rule to eliminate counts of multiple offenses in an incident, NIBRS can capture the complete overall number of crimes.

In 1991, the FBI began collecting crime data for NIBRS. For the next 20 years, the FBI made NIBRS data available by request on data files but did not publish it until 2011. On January 1, 2021, when the FBI retires SRS, NIBRS will be the nation’s main crime statistics system.

The Digital Age: The Crime Data Explorer

Crime data is dynamic. Offenses occur, arrests are made, and property is recovered every day. The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, the digital front door for UCR data, is an attempt to reflect that fluidity in crime. The data presented there is updated regularly in a way that UCR publications previously could not be. Launched in 2017, the CDE’s content and features are updated and expanded continuously. CDE enables law enforcement agencies, researchers, journalists, and the public to more easily use and understand the massive amounts of UCR data using charts and graphs.

CDE can:

  • Access NIBRS, SRS, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, and police employment data.
  • Sort data on a national, state, or departmental level.
  • Download whole UCR datasets or specified tables.
  • Filter data by time going back to 1985.
  • Select specific offense categories.
  • Automatically generate data visualizations.
  • Seamlessly integrate updated data from past years.

The FBI continues to develop CDE, intending it to be the main portal for users to access nationwide crime data. The FBI plans for CDE to:

  • Include all UCR data collections.
  • Feature data stories that show how data can be understood and used.
  • Be sortable by more data elements, making it more versatile for different users.
  • Have quarterly updates.
  • Contain data from federal agencies.

The Future: Beyond 90 Years 

Over the last 90 years, as trends and events have presented new challenges and opportunities, the FBI has expanded and refined the UCR Program to keep it modern and relevant. The UCR Program continues to evolve to serve law enforcement and meet society’s needs for reliable crime data.

Continued

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NCIC Helps Alaska Police Find Missing Person in Hawaii

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News

On August 6, 2020, a detective with the Juneau (Alaska) Police Department requested a National Crime Information Center (NCIC) off-line search for a missing person.

In June, the missing man’s mother reported she last saw her son in March. The woman said that although her son was homeless and suffered from addiction, it was unlike him to lose all contact with family. Police searched homeless shelters and checked with relatives and could not find the man.

One Juneau detective’s experience with missing person cases led him to contact the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division.

An NCIC specialist conducted an off-line search for the missing person and returned the results to the detective. NCIC records showed the Honolulu Police Department had queried the missing person’s name several times in May and June.

The Juneau detective contact Honolulu police, who confirmed the missing man’s identity. Thanks to the NCIC off-line search feature, Juneau detectives confirmed to the man’s family that he was alive and preferred to stay in Hawaii.