1110-0015 Supporting Statement PART B

PART B. Statistical Methods

1. The Hate Crime Incident Report (OMB No. 1110-0015) includes respondents from US law enforcement agencies who voluntarily report crimes to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies report crime data to the UCR, and of those, 14,977 reported hate crime data. As most agencies use automated records management systems (RMS) which populate hate crime forms electronically based on the reporting law enforcement officer’s investigation report, those agencies do not have actual staff manually filling out forms. Only 700 agencies actually use the FBI’s Hate Crime Incident Report forms and most of those are completed by office clerks who report what the law enforcement officer noted on the agency’s investigation reports. In some states, agency incident forms are sent to a State UCR Program office where the data are transferred to a UCR Hate Crime Incident Report. Furthermore, there are many instances where a committee makes the determination as to whether an offense involves a hate-bias before a Hate Crime Incident Report is completed.

Approximate total number of agencies participating in UCR in 2010	18,000+
Total number of agencies participating in UCR Hate Crime in 2010	14,977
Approximate percentage of agencies participating in UCR Hate Crime	83%
Approximate percentage of agencies that submitted Hate Crime incidents, of the 14,977 participating agencies	13%
Approximate percentage of agencies that submitted zero Hate Crime incidents, of the 14,977 participating agencies	87%

Based on historical reporting trends, similar response rates are expected in future hate crime data collections, however, the FBI UCR Program actively liaisons with national and federal law enforcement agencies to encourage participation in UCR data collections.

2. As the UCR hate crime data collection is intended to collect all reported hate crimes from law enforcement agencies in the US, sampling methodologies are not used. Due to the relatively low occurrence of hate crime often presenting samples too small for applying valid and reliable statistical inferences to larger populations, the UCR Program does not apply estimation procedures in the Hate Crime Statistics Program. Approximately 83 percent of the UCR law enforcement agencies participate in the Hate Crime Statistics Program. Of the 83 percent of participating agencies, only approximately 13 percent submit hate crime incidents. The other approximately 87 percent submit zero hate crime incidents. All agencies that participate in the Hate Crime Statistics Program, whether they submit incidents or zero reports, correlate to all population group sizes and have many diverse attributes. Possible attributes known of these agencies include: a representation of population density and degrees of urbanization; various compositions of population particularly youth concentration; population mobility with respect to residents' mobility, commuting patterns, and transient factors; different economic conditions including median income, poverty level, and job availability; areas with different modes of transportation and highway systems; different cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics; family conditions with respect to divorce and family cohesiveness; climate; effective strength of law enforcement agencies; administrative and investigative emphases of law enforcement; policies of other components of the criminal justice system; citizens' attitudes toward crime; and crime reporting practices of the citizenry. Applying hate crime rates per 100,000 persons broadly across US populations when relatively few hate crimes occur would irresponsibly lead to a misrepresentation of the actual occurrence of hate crime in the Nation. The data are published as they are reported to the FBI. Those law enforcement agencies that do not participate in the hate crime program are not included in the hate crime participation agency counts. The law enforcement agencies that do not send in hate crime reports are not estimated to compensate for the missing jurisdictions due to the already low occurrence of hate crime incidents as reported by the 87 percent of participating agencies. The FBI relies on the integrity of data contributors reporting data, however, Quality Assurance Reviews are conducted by the CJIS Audit Unit on a triennial basis. The results of the audits are not used to adjust crime data, but are rather used to educate reporting agencies on their compliance with national UCR guidelines.

3. Response rates are maximized through liaison with State UCR programs. Because of the relationship between FBI UCR staff and law enforcement agencies, communications encouraging data submissions and correcting potential anomalies, occur frequently. FBI UCR staff have a strong understanding of contextual challenges agencies face in reporting valid and reliable data and regularly work to overcome nonresponse issues when such challenges occur. The mission of the Hate Crime Statistics Program in UCR is to acquire hate crimes data, establish guidelines for the collection of such data, and publish an annual summary of hate crime data. Eighty three percent of the UCR Program agencies report hate crime data, the universe of reported hate crimes are collected by contributing agencies and reported to the FBI. The FBI is working to help the absent 17 percent of law enforcement agencies participate in the hate crime data collection.

4. The new Hate Crime Incident Report form was pretested by conducting interviews with 9 individuals. Five were data entry assistants from the Maryland State UCR Program office and 4 were staff (2 assistants; 2 detectives) from the Washington DC Police Department. The purpose of the interviews was to test cognitive and usability elements of the redesigned form. The interviews found the following:

• The form should flow over two or more pages with more white space and better instructions for each section.

• The categories for location should be numerically sorted (they are alpha sorted right now).

• Boxes for entering numbers should be more clearly defined (some participants put two numbers in one box, others put one digit in two boxes – 10, verses 1,0.)

• Offender/Victim breakdowns were often missed. They need to be more obvious with better directions noted. Same with ethnicity.

• Unknown age breakdowns need a way to be clearly reported. Interviewees did not know how to record an unknown age.

• Directions for entering multiple biases on more than one offense need to be more clearly presented.

• Respondents wanted more location categories.

• New bias codes were clearly understood and properly coded by each individual.

Pretest findings requiring changes to the form were made for this PWRA submission.

5. Points of Contact

Dr. James H. Noonan

Statistician

[email protected]

304 625-2927

Kristi Donahue

Hate Crime Program Coordinator

[email protected]

304 625-2972

Patricia Hanning

Technical Information Specialist (OMB PWRA Point of Contact)

[email protected]

304 625-2957

FBI, Criminal Justice Information Services Division

Module E-3

1000 Custer Hollow Road

Clarksburg WV 26306