Training Helps Increase Hate Crime Statistics Reporting
June 10, 2021
The FBI is working to increase reporting of agencies that report hate crimes data.
Staff from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and Civil Rights Unit (CRU) formed a plan in 2019 to increase reporting of hate crime statistics. After the team built a training program, the UCR Program invited all its state program managers to participate. As a result, programs in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, and Texas scheduled training between March and November 2019. In September 2019, UCR staff offered training at the annual conference of the Montana Information and Records Associations.
During the sessions, CRU special agents covered the federal hate crime statutes and landmark cases. UCR staff presented an overview of the Hate Crime Statistics Program, stressing the benefits of reporting hate crime data.
Later, an analysis of 2019 hate crime data showed a 9.6 percent overall increase in the number of agencies reporting data. After the training, the number of hate crime incidents reported by Alaska, Colorado, Montana, and Texas rose 3.4 percent compared to the number of hate crime incidents they reported in 2018. And in California, 100 percent of the state’s law enforcement agencies now participate in the data collection.
Following the success of the 2019 training program, UCR staff members will present sessions at six regional meetings organized by the CRU this year. The first conference is being held in Denver this week. Below is the rest of the schedule:
July 20-21 - Louisville, Kentucky
August 11-12 - San Francisco
September 1-2 - Phoenix
October 27-28 - Tampa, Florida
November 17-18 - New Orleans
If your agency would like more information about the UCR’s regional conferences, contact CRU at 202-324-3768.
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