1110-0002_Supporting Statement Part B

PART B. Statistical Methods

1. The potential respondent universe of the Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) includes all United States (U.S.) LEAs who submit their crime stats via the SRS. In 2015, 11,791 SRS U.S. LEAs voluntarily participated in FBI’s UCR Program. Out of those agencies, approximately 1,581 voluntarily reported 2-12 months of supplementary homicide data to the FBI UCR Program. Less than three percent of participating agencies do not report any supplementary homicide data. LEAs consist of local, county, state, tribal and federal agencies which correlate to all population group sizes and have many diverse attributes. These agencies include a mix 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; policies of other components of the criminal justice system; citizens’ attitudes toward crime; and crime reporting practices of the citizenry. See chart below of participating agencies:

	Population Group	Number of Agencies	Population Covered
Cities	Group I (250,000 inhabitants and more)	65	51,448,151
	Group II (100,000 to 249,999 inhabitants)	150	22,312,003
	Group III (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants)	343	23,737,500
	Group IV (25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants)	586	20,227,802
	Group V (10,000 to 24,999 inhabitants)	1,272	20,294,222
	Group VI (Less than 10,000 inhabitants)1,2	6,359	17,114,079
Counties	Group VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2	1,559	15,419,912
	Group IX (Metropolitan County)2	1,457	54,777,536
	Total	11,791	225,331,205

¹ Includes universities and colleges to which no population is attributed.

² Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

SRS SHR Eligible Participation, 2015
Number of Months Submitted	Number of Agencies
2 months	1
3 months	2
4 months	1
5 months	2
6 months	3
7 months	1
8 months	4
9 months	3
10 months	5
11 months	18
12 months	1,541
# of agencies not reporting SHR data	341
Total	1,922

Out of the 1,922 agencies which voluntarily reported SHR data to FBI UCR Program, via SRS, approximately 1,541 submit twelve months complete data (97.5 percent). Of the remaining agencies, 40 submit between one and eleven months of data, and 341 don’t provide SHR data.

2. Although some agencies have permission to submit their data on a quarterly, biannual, or annual basis, most SHR data is collected/received from state UCR program participants on a monthly basis. FBI UCR Program has established various time frames and deadlines for acquiring the monthly data. The FBI should receive the monthly reports/submissions by the seventh day of each month. Annual deadlines are also designated in order to collect/assess receipt of monthly submissions. There are times when special circumstances may cause an agency to request an extension. FBI UCR Program has the authority to grant these extensions. Although the law enforcement community requested forms be collected on a monthly basis since police records are run on a calendar month, FBI UCR Program has agencies which submit data quarterly, twice a year, and even once a year. Upon approval, agencies can submit their data at intervals that minimizes the burdens to the agency.

As SHR data collection is intended to collect all reported supplementary homicide incident data from law enforcement agencies in the United States, sampling methodologies are not used. Past SHR data collections have not included national or subnational estimates for SHR data because FBI UCR Program does not have the imputation procedures defined for supplementary homicide data.

FBI CJIS Division is projected to deploy the UCR Technical Refresh later this year. This project will manage the acquisition, development, and integration of a new and improved data collection system which will affect UCR participating local, state, tribal, and federal LEAs. The project’s goal is to improve the accuracy and timeliness of the crime data collection and delivery process. The UCR Technical Refresh will provide enhanced data management tools for greater efficiency in data collection, processing, and maintenance of crime data. This project will provide automated processes, tailored reports on an as-needed basis, and will streamline publication processes which will give users more timely access to the data.

Although the FBI makes an effort through its editing procedures, training practices, and correspondence to ensure the reliability of the data received, the receipt of accurate statistics hedges on adherence to the established standards of reporting at the agency level. The FBI relies on data integrity from our contributors, but, staff from the CJIS Audit Unit are available to conduct Quality Assurance Reviews. The results of the audits are not used to adjust crime data, but to educate reporting agencies on compliance with national UCR guidelines.

3. Response rates are maximized through liaison with state UCR programs. Communications encouraging data submissions occur frequently because of the relationship between the FBI UCR Program staff and LEAs. FBI UCR Program staff have a strong understanding of contextual challenges agencies face in reporting valid and reliable data and regularly work to overcome no-response issues when such challenges occur. The mission of the FBI UCR Program is to acquire SHR data, establish collection guidelines, and publish SHR data.

Currently, 80.2 percent of FBI UCR Program SRS reporting agencies who are eligible to report SHR data submit 12 months of data to the FBI, while 2.1 percent submit between 2-11 months of data. The remaining 17.7 percent do not submit SHR data. Based on historical reporting trends, similar response rates are expected in future SHR collections, however, FBI UCR Program actively liaisons with national LEAs to encourage participation in UCR data collections.

FBI UCR Program assists agencies in submitting 12 months of complete data through active liaisons with state UCR programs and individual LEAs. To encourage the submission of data, a listing of missing reports are sent to state UCR programs and individual LEAS twice a year, and then follow up contact is also made to those agencies to further encourage the submission of missing data.

4. The FBI has conducted this information collection since 1940 with high rates of response and has specific plans to further improve participation; proposed initiatives are described in Part B #3. FBI UCR Program receives guidance for implementing or making changes to a data collection from the CJIS Advisory Policy Board (APB). The FBI CJIS advisory process was developed to obtain user community advice and guidance on the development and operation of all CJIS Division programs. The philosophy underlying the advisory process is one of shared management; which is, the FBI along with local, state, tribal, and federal data providers, and system users share responsibility for the operation and management of all systems administered by the FBI to benefit the criminal justice community.

Liaison with members of law enforcement (International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Sheriffs Association, and CJIS APB) has been effective in the effort to collect SHR data and to design a collection form which would provide meaningful information to all those concerned. There have not been any changes to the current SHR form which would need to be tested. No comments or problems have been reported through the CJIS advisory process or ASUCRP which meet frequently throughout each year. This collection will change when the National Use of Force (UoF) Data Collection is fully implemented as all justifiable homicide data will be captured within the UoF collection. The FBI will announce a timeframe for launching this collection at a later date.

FBI UCR Program collects data on negligent manslaughter, but currently does not publish this data as it is not considered a major index crime. However, in 2019, the FBI will begin collecting vehicular negligent manslaughter data in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). This data will be published in the 2019 edition of NIBRS, to be released in 2020.

5. Christopher A. Nicholas

LESS Chief

<[email protected]>

304-625-3690

Amy C. Blasher

CSMU Chief

<[email protected]>

304-625-4840

Cynthia Barnett-Ryan

Statistician

<[email protected]>

304-625-3576

Kristi L. Donahue

Management/Program Analyst

<[email protected]>

304-625-2972

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