Supporting Statement B

PART B. Statistical Methods

1. The potential respondent universe of the Hate Crime Incident Report includes 11,414 local LEAs voluntarily participating in the UCR Program’s HCDC via the Summary Reporting System. Out of those agencies, approximately 8,840 voluntarily reported 1–4 quarters of hate crime data to the FBI UCR Program. Less than ten percent of LEAs do not report hate crime incident 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)	64	51,314,556
	Group II (100,000 to 249,999 inhabitants)	150	22,384,731
	Group III (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants)	345	23,920,625
	Group IV (25,000 to 49,999 inhabitants)	603	20,850,423
	Group V (10,000 to 24,999 inhabitants)	1,320	21,108,876
	Group VI (Less than 10,000 inhabitants)1,2	6,051	16,871,965
Counties	Group VIII (Nonmetropolitan County)2	1,464	14,942,565
	Group IX (Metropolitan County)2	1,417	53,152,059
	Total	11,414	224,539,749

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

² Includes state police to which no population is attributed.

SRS Hate Crime Participation, 2016
Number of Quarters Submitted	Number of Agencies
1 quarter	191
2 quarters	181
3 quarters	742
4 quarters	7,726
# of agencies not reporting Hate Crime data	2,574
Total	11,414

Out of the 11,414 agencies which voluntarily reported Hate Crime data to the FBI UCR Program via SRS, approximately 7,726 submit 4 quarters of complete data (67.6 percent). Of the remaining agencies, 1,114 submitted between 1 and 3 quarters of data (9.8 percent), and 2,574 agencies (22.6 percent) didn’t participate in the HCDC.

2. Although some agencies have permission to submit their data on a biannual or annual basis, most hate crime data is collected/received from state UCR program participants on a monthly/quarterly basis. The FBI UCR Program has established various timeframes and deadlines for acquiring the monthly data. The FBI should receive the monthly/quarterly reports/submissions by the seventh day of each month. Annual deadlines are also designated in order to collect/assess receipt of monthly/quarterly submissions. There are times when special circumstances may cause an agency to request an extension. The FBI UCR Program has the authority to grant these extensions. Although the law enforcement community requested data be collected on a monthly basis since police records are run on a calendar month, the 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 the UCR HCDC is intended to collect hate crimes that come to the attention of LEAs in the United States, sampling methodologies are not used. Instead, the FBI UCR Program relies upon the enumeration of these incidents in total to make statements about the relative frequency and characteristics of hate crime in the United States. However, the voluntary nature of the UCR HCDC results in some agencies reporting incomplete information and others not participating in the data collection. Accounting for the impact of missing data in the HCDC is difficult because these agencies may vary in important ways. Possible attributes of these agencies that should be accounted for include: population density and degrees of urbanization; 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.

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. The 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 bias data, establish collection guidelines, and publish hate crime data.

Currently, 67.6 percent of FBI UCR Program hate crime reporting agencies who are eligible to report bias data submit twelve months/four quarters of data to the FBI, while 9.8 percent submit between one and eleven months/one and three quarters of data. The remaining 22.6 percent do not submit bias data. Based on historical reporting trends, similar response rates are expected in future hate crime collections, however, the FBI UCR Program actively liaisons with national LEAs to encourage participation in the UCR HCDC.

The FBI UCR Program assists agencies in submitting twelve months/four quarters of complete hate crime 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 1991 with high rates of response and is developing a strategy for increasing participation. The 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 (local, college/university, county, state police, federal law enforcement officers, civilian law enforcement employees, and CJIS APB) has been effective in the effort to collect hate crime data and to design a collection which provides meaningful information to all those concerned. There have not been any changes to the current hate crime incident report, therefore, testing is not required. No comments or problems have been reported through the CJIS advisory process or the Association of State Uniform Crime Reporting Programs which meet frequently throughout each year.

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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