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Criminal Justice Statistical Analysis Center Assessing the Validity of Hate Crime Reporting: an Analysis of Nibrs Data

The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was developed over 80 years ago to meet the need for reliable crime statistics for the nation. Today, nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States participate in this voluntary program. UCR, and the modernized National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), are recognized as the primary source of information about crimes reported to the police. While the UCR Program is critical to understanding crime, there are known limitations to these data such as underreporting and misclassification. As with any large scale data collection system, errors are inevitable and occur for a variety of reasons. While it is unlikely that all error will be eliminated, it is important to understand and measure it. Classification error occurs when the facts of the crime are recorded by the police, but the crime type is identified incorrectly. These errors can occur for many reasons including inaccurate interpretation of UCR definitions, reliance on criminal rather than statistical definitions, record automation issues, and even purposive actions in an attempt to downgrade crime. Classification error is particularly important since it can ultimately impact the statistical accuracy of reported crime statistics. The purpose of the current study is to examine the misclassification of crimes as they relate to hate, that is, the degree to which classification error impacts the statistical accuracy of reported hate crimes. Such error can vary by crime type and result in both the undercounting and overcounting of crimes in official statistics. To focus this study on hate crimes is noteworthy because, by their very nature, hate crimes create a unique set of classification issues. Inherently, the intention of people involved and/or their motivation for committing a crime must be taken into account by officers when determining whether a particular incident constitutes a hate crime. For this reason, and others to be discussed later in this report, it is often speculated that many hate crimes are not accurately recorded in official records. Through a systematic review of official records, this study seeks to examine the degree to which classification error impacts the statistical accuracy of hate crime, as reported in official law enforcement statistics. Utilizing a methodology previously developed by the authors 2006), this study assesses the amount of classification error in hate crime reporting in West Virginia. The researchers randomly selected cases, which were included in the state's statistical data files, from designated offense categories for a detailed …