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Society & Culture
Hate Crimes
Persecution

“The FBI released the 2015 Hate Crime Statistics on Monday, showing the number of hate crimes reported to police increased by about 6.7 percent last year, led largely by a 67 percent rise in [reported] crimes against Muslims.” Jurist

Discussion

Wed, 11/16/16

Two things that tend to be overlooked in the dumbed down versions of reporting on the FBI UCR data.

1) The data comes from participating local law enforcement agencies around the country. The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services division collects and aggregates the data.

2) These are reported complaints, not convictions or even indictments.

… which doesn’t mean this is no cause for concern. It is. But many factors can explain an uptick in reports of hate crime. It doesn’t necessarily follow that there is an increase in hate. Also, you’d have to dig into the tables and do some analysis to see which localities are seeing this the most.

The real report is here. You can download spreadsheets full of data if you want.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Wed, 11/16/16

Is that the number of reported incidents (see Aaron’s note above) against Muslims amounts to a whole….301 offenses reported.

Not indictments made, not arrests made, not convictions. Reports made. When the total number of crimes reported in this country each year is in the millions, let’s just say this is not #1 or #2 on the Pareto.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Wed, 11/16/16
FYI for anyone doing crime rate research…
The Bureau of Justice Statistics measures crime a different way, using the National Crime Victimization Survey. This data is collected by BJS from a sample of households and then extrapolated, if that’s the right word.
The ways it differs from FBI data are interesting, but, so far, they don’t collect hate crime information. I haven’t heard if that’s on their agenda for the future, but it would be helpful to have that additional perspective on hate crime.

BJS data for 2015 is here:
http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5804
…and you can also download a bunch of spreadsheets to analyze there too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

If you want stats on successful prosecutions, google United States Sentencing Commission. Lots of data there.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.