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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>FAQ | Jacob Kaplan</title>
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<meta name="author" content="Jacob Kaplan">
<meta name="description" content="Explore crime, arrest, and police injury/death
data in the United States with this website. All of the data comes from the
FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program data.">
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<h1 id="common_questions">
<a href="data.html#common_questions" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Common data questions/issues</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">County-level UCR data</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>I have already posted my reasons for why this data should not be
used in research <a href="https://ucrbook.com/county-level-ucr-data.html">
here</a>. For more extensive documentation on the
data's issues, please see
<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1016060020848">
this paper</a> by Maltz and Targonski
from 2002.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Analyzing data over time</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Each year of UCR/NIBRS data has different agencies reporting.
The overall trend is that more agencies report over time, though
this is not always true (e.g. Florida stopped reporting most data
in the 1990s). So if you have data that covers more than one year,
make sure you are only analyzing the same agencies each year.
Even within the same year some agencies don't report for 12
months, meaning they are not comparable to agencies that do.
This likely means removing agencies that don't report every
month of every year of your study period.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why are there negative numbers
(is this an error)?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Negative numbers can happen in UCR data and are correct, not a
data issue. UCR data is reported by police monthly and if they
discover that a previous month was incorrect they don't alter
the incorrect month to remove that reported crime, they report
a negative crime in the current month so the annual crime count
will be correct. For example, consider an agency that reports
a burglary in January and then in June discover that the burglary
didn't actually occur. In June they will report -1 burglaries.
In practice it's rare to see negative numbers since the number
of actual crimes in a month often outweights the number of corrections,
but it is possible and is not an error. Converting negative numbers to
missing values is not correct. See more on pages 82-83
of the <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/additional-ucr-publications/ucr_handbook.pdf/at_download/file">FBI's
Manual for UCR data</a>. </p>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What is the most common mistake people make
with this data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Like all data, the data on this site and available to download
on <a href="openicpsr.org/">openICPSR</a> has flaws. This is
especially true of the FBI's UCR and NIBRS data available here. The main
problems with the data is that it only counts reported crime and that
not all agencies report (and those that do may not report all year).
However, these are only the technical problems with the data - the bigger
issue is in how people use it. Each of these issues can be solved - or at least avoided
in conducting research - and the nuances of each dataset can be handled. However,
many published articles that I've read either do not address these issues or
even acknowledge that they exist. There is excellent documentation
on these datasets in academic articles and in the FBI's manual for the
data. <b>If you intend to use this data you should read these documents
(please don't ask me for links to them beyond what I already provide
on this page) carefully and spend time exploring the data yourself.
Simply running a regression on the data without fully understanding the
data is bad research.</b> </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Data errors</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>If you believe that you found an error in one of the datasets,
please read the FBI's manual on that data to ensure it's not a
known issue or is not an error at all. Common incorrect beliefs
that something is erroneous are negative numbers in UCR data or
Florida not appearing for many years in UCR data.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Misspellings in column names</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>I release the data as .dta (Stata) files which has a 32 character
limit for column names. Therefore I sometimes have to abbreviate
column names to meet this limit. Most misspellings you see in the
column names are intentional to meet this requirement.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Source of FIPS codes</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>
<a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-identifiers.html">
FIPS codes</a>
are US Census unique identifiers (within state) for
geographic areas including state, county, and "place" (i.e. city).
They are useful when merging with other datasets such as the US Census
or other government datasets. These identifiers are not in the UCR
data originally so I added them by merging the UCR data to the
Law Enforcement Agency Identifiers Crosswalk (LEAIC) that
<a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/NACJD/index.html">
NACJD</a> produced (for more info on this dataset please see
the Learning Guide on it that I made for NACJD
<a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/NACJD/guides/leaic/index.html">
Here</a>). I merged the LEAIC and UCR data by matching on the ORI
(unique agency identifier code) variable.
</p>
</div>
<h1 id="nibrs">
<a href="index.html#border_patrol" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Crime (NIBRS)</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">What is NIBRS data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data is a collection of
data compiled by the FBI by reporting police agencies that provides detailed information
about each crime that agency knows about. It's a fairly complex and detailed dataset
that contains more information than available on this site. For more information, please select
my book on the data <a href= "https://nibrsbook.com/">here</a>.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why are some agencies or years missing?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>I only include agencies that reported 12 months of data in a given year. If an agency reports
fewer than 12 months for that year I exclude that year, but keep in any other year
for that agency if they reported 12 months of data for those years. </p>
</div>
<h1 id="alcohol">
<a href="index.html#alcohol" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Alcohol</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data is from the Apparent Per Capita Alcohol Consumption:
National, State, and Regional Trends
1977-2016 report produced by Sarah P. Haughwout and Dr. Megan E.
Slater at the National Institute
on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The Data page of this site has a
link to download he data. For the
original report, click
<a href="https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance110/CONS16.htm">here</a>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">How was per capita alcohol consumption determined?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>For a complete methodology please see the actual report
<a href="https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/surveillance110/CONS16.htm">here.</a> The
authors determined the amount of alcohol consumed (originally
measured in gallons of ethanol
- pure alcohol) through sales data or tax information for each
state-year. Population data
for how many people age 14 and up live in each state was acquired
from the CDC WONDER data.
Ethanol was divided by population to determine per capita consumption.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why is the "Total Drinks" column not equal the
sum of the individul drink categories?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The original report provides an equation to convert the amount of
total ethanol consumed into a
"total drinks" variable so I used that to make that variable. For the
individual drink categories
(beer, shots of liquor, and glasses of wine), it provides an equation
to convert the amount of
ethanol consumed into the amount of alcohol. I then converted this to
number of drinks for each
category based on the National Institute of Health's
<a href="https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/what-standard-drink">page</a>
saying how many ounces of alcohol make up a drink for those categories.
Therefore, the sum of the categories
is slightly different than the "total drinks" column.
</p>
</div>
<h1 id="arrest">
<a href="index.html#arrest" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Arrest</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data is from the FBI's Arrests by Age, Sex, and Race data
which is part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.
This data provides the number of arrests that occurred in a city
in any given year and breaks that down by age
(adult or juvenile), race, and gender. </a></p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why does it say 'cannabis' instead of 'marijuana'?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>I try to keep data on this site consistent with the data I have
published on openICPSR and I
call it 'cannabis' there. I do so only because the programming language
Stata limits columns to 32 characters
and 'cannabis' is a shorter word than 'marijuana'. </a></p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why doesn't it show arrests by ethnicity
(Hispanic/Not Hispanic)?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data does not show arrests broken down by if the arrestee is
Hispanic or not. </a></p>
</div>
<h1 id="border_patrol">
<a href="index.html#border_patrol" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Border Patrol</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>See <a href="http://doi.org/10.3886/E109522V2">here.</a></p>
</div>
<h1 id="crime">
<a href="index.html#crime" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Crime (UCR)</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data is from the FBI's Offenses Known and Clearances by
Arrest data which is part of the
Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. This data provides the
number of crimes that occurred
in an agency in any given year and how many of those crimes were cleared.</a></p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why did rape go up starting in 2013?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Starting in 2013, rape has a new, broader definition in the UCR to include oral and anal
penetration (by a body part or object) and allow men to be victims.
The previous definition included only forcible intercourse against a woman. As this revised
definition is broader than the original one, more rapes are reported (
social changes may also be partly responsible as they could encourage victims to report more).
This definitional change makes post-2013 rape data non-comparable to
pre-2013 data.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">How do you measure when an agency reports 12 months of data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The FBI does have a variable that says how many months an agency reported each year. But this variable
actually just measures the last month reported. So if the last month an agency reported was December then it
would say that it reported 12 months; if the last month was August it'd report 8 months. Even if the only month reported
was December (August) it'd still say that there were 12 (8) months reported. I think this is a bad method - though
it doesn't make too much of a difference since when an agency reports at all they usually do so for 12 months - but I have a
different method for this site. I define a month reported as long as there is at least a single crime in that month. The tradeoff to this
method is while it does prevent incorrectly keeping data that isn't really 12 months reported, it also incorrectly drops data that is.
For example, a very small agency may truly have no crimes in a given month and my method incorrectly drops it. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">The data says there were 0 crimes but I know
that a crime happened. Why does it say 0?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data doesn't differentiate between a "real zero" and a "not
reported zero". If an agency
doesn't report any crimes (even if crimes did occur), the data will
say zero crimes occurred.
Even though the data indicates how many months of the year that agency
reported, that doesn't
necessarily mean that they reported fully. An agency that reports all
12 months of the year
may still report only incomplete data. Agencies can report partial
data each month and still
be considered to have reported that month. Chicago, for example,
reports every month but
until the last few years didn't report any rapes.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Does this include all crimes reported? (Hierarchy Rule)</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No, this data only includes the most serious crime in an incident
(except for motor vehicle
theft which is always included). For incidents where most the one
crime happens (for example,
a robbery and a murder), only the more serious (murder in this case)
will be counted. This is
called the Hierarchy Rule. See more on pages 10-12 of the
<a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/additional-ucr-publications/ucr_handbook.pdf/at_download/file">FBI's
Manual for UCR data</a> which details the Hierarchy Rule.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">If this data only includes the most serious crime in an incident,
how reliable is the data? (Does the Hierarchy Rule mess up our data?)</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Though the Hierarchy Rule does mean this data is an undercount, data
from other sources
indicate it isn't much of an undercount. The FBI's other data set,
the National Inicident-Based
Reporting System (NIBRS) contains every crime that occurs in an
incident (i.e. it doesn't
use the Hierarchy Rule). Using this we can measure how many crimes
the Hierarchy Rule excludes
(Most major cities do not report to NIBRS so what we find in NIBRS
may not apply to them).
In over 90% of incidents, only one crime is committed. Additionally,
when people talk about
"crime" they usually mean murder which, while incomplete to discuss
crime, means the UCR
data here is accurate on that measure.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What about crimes not reported to the police?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>A major limitation (in my opinion the most important limitation) to the data here is that it
doesn't include crimes not reported to police. Based on victimization surveys that ask people
both if they were victimized and if they reported that crime, we know that the majority of
crimes are not reported. This probably won't matter when looking at a single city for a short
period of time - the population won't change too much so even underreporting of crime will be
consistent underreporting. The issue becomes serious when looking at a city with major population
changes or comparing multiple cities as their population may have very different reporting
practices. There's no easy solution here but it is an important aspect of understanding crime
data that you should keep in mind. For a full breakdown of reporting rates broken down by
crime and a number of characteristics about the crime and victim (and reasons for not
reporting), see Tables 91-105 (pages 98-114) in <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cvus08.pdf">
this report on the National Crime Victmization Survey from 2008.</a></p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Should I use the crime count or crime rate?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Using the rate helps deal with population changes that could lead to changes in crime merely
because of that change but it isn't without its drawbacks. The main drawback with using a
rate is that it assumes equal risk of victimization, which we know isn't correct. For example,
when looking at rape, a crime that affects 6 times as many women as men (according to the
<a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv16re.pdf">2016 National Crime Victimation
Survey Table 6, page 9</a>), yet the rate is based on total population in that city
(the UCR does not differentiate victims by gender but other data sets, such as NIBRS
do, allowing for better rates.). Other crimes require even more granular rates. Murder
victims are predominantly young men, but this differs by type of murder - domestic
violence victims are mostly women. Also, consider that population comes from those who
live in the city and doesn't include people like tourists or people who work in that
city but live elsewhere yet can still be victimized in the city. So while rates are
probably better than counts as it lets you control for population, consider exactly
who that population is, and how risk changes within that population.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What are index crimes?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Index crimes (sometimes called Part I crimes) are a collection of eight crimes often divided
between Violent Index Crimes (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault (assault with a
weapon or causing serious bodily injury)) and Property Index Crimes (burglary, theft, motor
vehicle theft, and arson (however arson is not available in this data set)). When people discuss
"crime" they are often referring to this collection of crimes. One major drawback of this is
that it gives equal weight to each crimes. For example, consider if New York City has 100 fewer
murders and 100 more thefts this year than last year (and all other crimes didn't change). Their
total index crimes would be the same but this year would be far safer than last year. For complete
definitions of each crime, please see the FBI's <a href="https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/offenses.cfm">definitions page.</a></p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why are index crimes a poor measure of crime?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The biggest problem with index crimes is that it is simply the sum
of 8 (or 7 since arson data usually isn't available) crimes.
Index crimes have a huge range in their seriousness - it includes
both murder and theft.This is clearly wrong as
100 murders is more serious than 100 thefts. This is especially a
problem as less serious crimes (theft mostly) are far more
common than more serious crimes (in 2017 there were 1.25 million violent
index crimes in the United States. That same year had 5.5 million thefts.).
So index crimes undercount the seriousness of crimes. Looking at total
index crimes is, in effect, mostly just looking at theft.</p>
<br>
<p>This is especially a problem because it hide trends in violent crimes.
San Francisco, as an example, has had a huge increase in
index crimes in the last several years. When looking closer, that
increase is driven almost entirely by the near doubling of theft since 2011. During
the same years, violent crime has stayed fairly steady. So the city
isn't getting more dangerous but it appears like it is due to just looking at
total index crimes.
</p>
<br>
<p>While many researchers divide index crimes into violent and nonviolent
categories, which helps but even this isn't entirely sufficient.
Take Chicago as an example. It is a city infamous for its large number
of murders. But as a fraction of
index crimes, Chicago has a rounding error worth of murders. Their 653
murders in 2017 is only 0.5% of total index crimes. For violent index crimes,
murder makes up 2.2%. What this means is that changes in murder are very
difficult to detect. If Chicago had no murders this year, but a less
serious crime (such as theft) increased
slightly, we couldn't tell from looking at the number of index crimes.
</p>
</div>
<h1 id="death">
<a href="index.html#death" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Death</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data comes from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's
(CDC) WONDER data and provides
the number of deaths for several cause of death categories for each state.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What are age-adjusted rates?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The following is the CDC's definition of age-adjusted rates from
<a href="https://wonder.cdc.gov/wonder/help/faq.html#6">this page.</a>
</p>
<blockquote>The rates of almost all causes of disease, injury, and death vary by age. Age
adjustment is a technique for "removing" the effects of age from crude rates so as to
allow meaningful comparisons across populations with different underlying age structures.
For example, comparing the crude rate of heart disease in Florida with that of California
is misleading, because the relatively older population in Florida leads to a higher crude
death rate, even if the age-specific rates of heart disease in Florida and California were
the same. For such a comparison, age-adjusted rates are preferable. </blockquote>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why are some values missing?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The CDC does not report death counts when there are fewer than 16
deaths in that category. They do this both for confidentiality of
the deceased and to avoid the misuse of rates caused by such a
small numerator.</p>
</div>
<h1 id="hate_crime">
<a href="index.html#hate_crime" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Hate Crime</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data is from the FBI's Hate Crime dataset that they
release annually since the early 1990s. The data shown on this
website is only a small subset of the variables available in the
dataset. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What is the most common mistake people make with this data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Using it.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">WARNING: This data is very flawed</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This dataset is the most flawed of all of the UCR datasets.
While the main problems are simply an exacerbated version of
of dataset problems in other UCR data - low reporting rates among agencies,
only including reported crimes (and many hate crimes are not reported to police),
changing definitions of what counts as a hate crime, different agencies
reporting each year - the MAJOR problem is that people use this data
incredibly irresponsibly. A huge amount of research using this data
don't even acknowledge these problems and just naively use the data as
if it had no issues. The problems are discussed in more detail below but
the main takeaway is that this data is not appropriate for policy analysis. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Where is the FBI manual on this data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The manual is available on
<a href="https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/ucr/ucr-hate-crime-data-collection-guidelines-training-manual-02272015.pdf/view">
this page.</a>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What is a hate crime?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>In this data a hate crime is defined as a "normal" crime (or in
other words a crime already collected by UCR or NIBRS in their
normal reporting) where the victim was chosen because of the victims
group or status. For example, vandalism is a crime already included
in NIBRS data. If the vandalism occurred because of the victim's group
or status, such as vandalizing a synagogue due to bias against Jews, that
would be considered a hate crime. Animal cruelty was not a NIBRS crime
until 2018 so for years prior to that would not count as a hate crime. For
example, if a person poisoned a Black person's dog because of their bias against
Black people (and not just personal opposition towards this individual), it would
not be a hate crime if committed before 2018. So this data is not inclusive of
even all hate crimes reported to police, only ones that have a crime type already
reported to the FBI. Note that the hate crime is for the perceived victim
group even if that perception is wrong. In the FBI manual they
give the example of a hate crime against an Indian man who the offenders
believe is Black. This is reported as an anti-Black hate crime. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What should this data NOT be used for?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data should not be used for anything in the following
(incomplete) list:
<br>
<ul>
<li>Aggregating to a larger geography than the reporting agency
(ESPECIALLY TO THE NATIONAL LEVEL)</li>
<li>Comparing agencies</li>
<li>Aggregating to total hate crimes per agency</li>
<li>Looking at hate crimes of a specific bias motivation within a single agency
over time without verifying that this bias motivation was reported for
all years</li>
<li>Imputing missing data</li>
<li>Assuming that underreporting is consistent across time and place.</li>
</ul>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What should this data be used for?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The only thing you should do to use this data properly is
look at hate crimes of the same bias motivation (e.g. anti-Jewish,
anti-Black) in the same agency over time (assuming the agency reports
the same months each year) and assuming that the bias motivation
has been reported by that agency every year. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Is it a good idea to aggregate over geographies?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No. The problem with this is that few agencies report so aggregating
would exclude a lot of agencies that are actually in that geography
but don't report. To my opinion there is no good way to impute missing
hate crime data so any attempt to do so will be very flawed and give incorrect
results. Every year when the FBI releases the report on this data the news
and many academics will just aggregate all reporting agencies to the national
level (ignoring all the missing agencies) and pretend that this is an
accurate count of national hate crimes. This
is a terrible idea and gives very inaccurate counts of hate crimes. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Is it a good idea to compare hate crimes
across agencies?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No. Not all agencies report for all months of the year or even for
all bias motivations so they're often not comparable. Additionally,
since the opportunity to commit a hate crime (i.e. the number of people
of a particular victim group) differs between cities, differences across
cities in hate crimes may be due to differences in opportunity, not hate. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Is it a good idea to compare hate crimes
across time?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Generally no. The FBI has added new bias motivations over time
so there is artificially an increase in hate crimes just due to this.
For example, if 10 transgender people (one of the bias motivations
that hasn't always been included as a reportable bias motivation) are always
the victim of a hate crime in a particular agency, the year that this becomes
an accepted motivation, the agency starts reporting an extra 10 hate crimes
per year. But in reality hate crime was consistent across time. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why do some bias motivations have zero for many
years then start having hate crimes?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>There are three reasons this could be. First, the agency may have
gotten reports but not submitted hate crimes of those bias motivations.
Second, they may have never received a complaint for this bias motivation
prior to this year. Third, the FBI has increased the number of bias motivations
they accepted so this may be one of this bias motivations. Prior to the
accepted year, these would always be marked as zero reports. Note that in these
cases not all agencies start reporting these motivations in the same year as
the FBI accepts them. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Are police agencies required to submit this data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No, reporting this data, like all UCR data, is voluntary. Some states
do require that their agencys report UCR data but this is no national
requirement. And even in these mandatory states not all agencies report.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Are hate crimes a good measure of hate?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No, like all crimes hate crimes are dependent on opportunity - though
hate crimes have more variation in opportunity than other crimes.
Consider, for example, a city with 10% Black population and one with 50%
Black population. If anti-Black sentiment and willingness to attack
Black people for their race is the same in each city, in the second city
there is about five times as many opportunities as in the first cities
to offend. So even if anti-Black hate is identical in both cities, we'd
expect there to be many more anti-Black hate crimes in the second city. This can
be particially alleviated by using rates per victim group using Census data but
that's still flawed since you'd likely only get decennial Census data and the Census
doesn't collect all victim type info.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What units are these data in?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This shows the number of hate crime incidents, regardless of how many victims or offenders were involved.
Each incident can have multiple offenses and multiple bias motivations.
For simplicity in this site I only include the first offense and the first
bias motivation reported in the data.</p>
</div>
<h1 id="police">
<a href="index.html#police" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Police</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data is from the FBI's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and
Assaulted (LEOKA) data which is part of the Uniform
Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. This data provides information about
how many employees (civilian and officers)
are at a given agency. It also says how many officers were assaulted
for a number of different categories of assault.</a></p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why are there no female police officers until
1971?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Prior to 1971 the data did not breakdown employees by gender. The
years 1960-1970 put the number of total
employees in the male employees column
(and a value of 0 in the female employees column). </p>
</div>
<h1 id="prison">
<a href="index.html#prison" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">Prison</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the prison data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>The three categories that say the inmate's Most Serious Charge come from the
<a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/studies/37021/datadocumentation">National
Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP)</a> which provides data on how many people are incarcerated,
admitted, or released from prison that year. This is divided by the most serious crime they are
convicted of, race/ethnicity, and gender. All other categories are from the
<a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/studies/37003">National Prisoner
Statistics (NPS)</a> data which has different information than the NCRP and more years
available. Unlike the NCRP, the NPS has totals for the federal prison system, the state
prison system, and the combined US as a whole. Some states and some years do not have
information for some variables so you will likely see many missing values in this data.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Where is the population data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>All of the population data comes from the United States Census. For the years 2001-2016, I use
the annual American Community Survey which is a census data set that samples 1% of the population.
For the other years I use the decennial census and linearly impute for the years between the
censuses. As such, please be aware that these population values are only estimates. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What is wrong with the % of population aged 18-65 data?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>I included this because most people incarcerated in prison are between these ages. However,
not all are in these age groups meaning that this is almost certainly an over estimate. As
such you should use the rates as estimates, NOT precise rates.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">When looking at prisoners by race, is the rate per 100k
also by that race?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No. This rate is the rate for 100k people of any race. For example,
if you look at Black prisoners the rate per 100k people is the numbers
of Black prisoners in that state divided by the number of people in that
state (of all races) times 100,000. It is not divded only by the number of
Black people in that state. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What is the difference between custody and jurisdiction?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>As per the National Prisoner Statistics codebook, available to
download <a href="https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/studies/37003">here</a></p>
<blockquote>As states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons increased their
use of local jails and interstate compacts to house inmates, NPS began
asking states to report a count of inmates under the jurisdiction or
legal authority of state and federal adult correctional officials in
addition to their custody counts.
Since 1977, the jurisdiction count has been the preferred measure.
This count includes all state and federal inmates held in a public or
private prison (custody) and those held in jail facilities either
physically located inside or outside of the state of legal responsibility, and
other inmates who may be temporarily out to court or in transit from
the jurisdiction of legal authority to the custody of a confinement
facility outside that jurisdiction.
The difference between the total custody count and the jurisdiction
count was small (approximately 7,000) when both were first
collected in 1977. As more states began to report jurisdiction counts
and more states began to rely on local and privately operated
facilities to house inmates, the difference increased. At yearend
2016 the jurisdiction population totaled 1,506,800 while the custody
population totaled 1,293,887.</blockquote>
</div>
<h1 id="school">
<a href="index.html#school" style="text-decoration: none; color: black">School</a>
</h1>
<button class="accordion">Where is the school data from?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>All of this data comes from the Department of Education Office of
Postsecondary Education which collects crime data from colleges and
releases them publicly. Their website is
<a href="https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/">here</a>. While their
site does allow you to look at a single
school's data, it only shows the prior three years and only as tables.
For a comprehensive look at the data codebook, please see their PDF
<a href="https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/handbook.pdf">here</a>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What do the locations mean?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>As per the Department of Education definitions, available
<a href="https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/">here</a>
</p>
<blockquote><b>Not on Campus: </b>(1) Any building or property owned or
controlled by a student organization that is officially recognized by
the institution; or (2) Any building or property owned or controlled
by an institution that is used in direct support of, or in relation to,
the institution's educational purposes, is frequently used by students,
and is not within the same reasonably contiguous geographic area of
the institution.</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>On Campus - Total: </b>(1) Any building or property owned
or controlled by an institution within the same reasonably contiguous
geographic area
and used by the institution in direct support of, or in a manner related
to, the institution's educational purposes, including residence halls; and (2) Any
building or property that is within or reasonably contiguous to paragraph
(1) of this definition, that is owned by the institution but controlled by another
person, is frequently used by students, and supports institutional
purposes (such as a food or other retail vendor).</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>On Campus - Student Housing: </b>Any student housing
facility that is owned or controlled by the institution, or is located
on property that is
owned or controlled by the institution, and is within the reasonably
contiguous geographic area that makes up the campus is considered an on-campus student
housing facility.</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>Public Property: </b>All public property, including
thoroughfares, streets, sidewalks, and parking facilities, that is within
the campus, or immediately adjacent to and accessible from the campus.</blockquote>
<b>Total: </b>This is the sun of Not on Campus, On Campus - Total, and Public Property.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why don't crime categories overlap between
crimes and arrests?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>There are different rules for which offenses are included when
an offense is committed and a person is arrested so these categories
do not necessarily overlap.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why aren't sexual offenses included in the
Disciplinary Actions category?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>There are different rules for which offenses are included when an
offense is committed and a disciplinary actions are taken so these categories
do not necessarily overlap. As sexual offenses are not included in
the required categories for disciplinary action, they is not available in the data. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Is there overlap for arrests and disciplinary
actions?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No, if a person is arrested and then given disciplinary actions by
the scohol, only the arrest is counted.</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What does Disciplinary Action mean?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This is when a person is referred to the school for a "disciplinary
action" though the action does not need to actually take place and
the data does not specify which action is referred or the outcome of
that referral .</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What is a Sexual Offense - Forcible and a
Sexual Offense - Non-forcible?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>
<ul>
<li><b>Sexual Offense - Forcible</b> is the sum of rape and fondling.</li>
<li><b>Sexual Offense - Non-forcible</b> is the sum of incest and statutory rape.</li>
<li><b>Sexual Offense - Total</b> is the sum of Sexual Offense -
Forcible and Sexual Offense - Non-forcible.</li>
</ul>
For definitions of each individual crimes please see the Department of
Education's codebook <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/handbook.pdf">here</a>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Are hate crimes consistently reported?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>No, the hate crime data unwent a series of changes in how the data
was collected. The crimes theft, intimidation, and
vandalism/destruction of property
only started being reported in 2009. Starting in 2014, "gender identity"
was added as a possible bias motivation while in the same
year the "ethnicity or national origin" bias motivation was split into
either "ethnicity" or "national origin" bias motivations.
This means that you should be cautious when looking at total hate crime
changes as certain crimes/bias motivations were not included until recently. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Why are there no rapes before 2014?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>This data set did not collect information on the number of rape,
fondling, incest, or statutory rape crimes until 2014.
Instead, it grouped rape and fondling as Sexual Offense - Forcible,
and incest and statutory rape as Sexual Offense - Non-forcible.
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">What do the Violence Against Women Act subcategories mean?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>
<p>As per the Department of Education definitions,
available <a href="https://ope.ed.gov/campussafety/#/">here</a></p>
<blockquote><b>Dating Violence: </b>Violence committed by a person
who is or has been in a social relationship of a romantic or
intimate nature with the victim. The existence of such a relationship
shall be determined based on the reporting party’s
statement and with consideration of the length of the relationship,
the type of relationship, and the frequency of interaction
between the persons involved in the relationship. For the purposes
of this definition—
<ul>
<li>Dating violence includes, but is not limited to, sexual or
physical abuse or the threat of such abuse.</li>
<li>Dating violence does not include acts covered under the
definition of domestic violence.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>Domestic Violence: </b>A felony or misdemeanor crime
of violence committed—
<ul>
<li>By a current or former spouse or intimate partner of the victim;</li>
<li>By a person with whom the victim shares a child in common;</li>
<li>By a person who is cohabitating with, or has cohabitated with,
the victim as a spouse or intimate partner;</li>
<li>By a person similarly situated to a spouse of the victim under
the domestic or family violence laws of the jurisdiction</li>
</ul>
in which the crime of violence occurred, or by any other person
against an adult or youth victim who is protected from
that person’s acts under the domestic or family violence laws of the
jurisdiction in which the crime of violence occurred.
</blockquote>
<blockquote><b>Stalking: </b>Engaging in a course of conduct directed at
a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to—
<ul>
<li>Fear for the person’s safety or the safety of others; or</li>
<li>Suffer substantial emotional distress.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
</p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Is rate per 1,000 students a good measure?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Using rates is useful as it removes the important influence of the
number of people at that school, but has its own serious limitations.
Schools with similar number of students may still be very different
in their student population and risk of victimization. Consider, for example,
two schools which each have 20,000 students. If these two schools are
very similar in students, then the rate per 1,000 students could be useful
in comparing the schools are the groups are similar. If, however these
schools differ on factors such as if the school is urban, whether
students commute or
live on campus, ages of students, etc, then knowing purely the number
of students is not a very useful rate. Also consider that crimes can
occur against victims
other than students such as faculty or staff so a per 1,000 student
rate would overestimate crime by decreasing the denominator. </p>
</div>
<button class="accordion">Are changes in crimes a reflection of actual
changes in offenses, or changes in reporting?</button>
<div class="panel">
<p>Like all crime data, this data has a limitation as it is reported
offenses only. If likelihood of reporting changes, that will
be reflected in changes of reported offenses but we will not be able
to tell (based only on this data) whether it was the number
of crimes or the likelihood of reporting that changed. This is
especially a problem with sexual offenses as they are already were
unlikely to be reported and small changes in reporting likelihood
can cause a seemingly large change in crimes reported. Also keep in mind
that the population included (primarily college students) may have
different reporting likelihoods than other populations.</p>
</div>
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