Evaluating the Availability of Uniform Crime Reporting Data, and Using Data Management to Make It More Powerful and Accessible

Abstract

Existing true raw for Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Hate Crime Data is available in ASCII, with each year as a separate file, or on the FBI website, where the abridged summary information omits most of the additional demographic information obtained from the switch to a National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The attached NIBRS information is critical, because it provides additional data for social science researchers, citizens, and law enforcement to most accurately assess at-risk groups and areas and determine the causes of hate crime offenses. The fully-detailed ASCII format data has been reformatted and recoded into a single unified Microsoft Excel database. The process to do so is described step-by-step.