Assessing Data Completeness, Quality, and Representativeness of Justifiable Homicides in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports: A Research Note

Introduction The most widely used data set for studying police homicides—the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation—is collected from a voluntary sample. Materials and Methods Using a journalist-curated database of police-related deaths, we find the SHR poli...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Finch, Brian Karl (Author) ; Thomas, Kyla (Author) ; Beck, Audrey N. (Author) ; Burghart, D. Brian (Author) ; Klinger, David (Author) ; Johnson, Richard Ronald 1937- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Published: 2022
In: Journal of quantitative criminology
Year: 2022, Volume: 38, Issue: 1, Pages: 267-293
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
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Keywords:
Supplementary Homicide Reports
Officer-involved homicide
Uniform Crime Reports
Police homicide
Description
Summary:Introduction The most widely used data set for studying police homicides—the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation—is collected from a voluntary sample. Materials and Methods Using a journalist-curated database of police-related deaths, we find the SHR police homicide data to be substantially incomplete. This is due to both non-reporting and substantial under-reporting by agencies. Further, our inquiry discloses a pattern of error in identifying “victims” and “offenders” in the data, and finds that investigating agencies are often incorrectly listed as the responsible agency, which seriously jeopardizes police department-level analyses. Finally, there is evidence of sample bias such that the SHR data system is not representative of all police departments, nor is it representative of large police departments. Conclusions We conclude that the SHR data is of dubious value for assessing correlates of police homicides in the United States, as all analyses using it will reflect these widespread biases and significant undercounts. Analysis of SHR data for these purposes should cease.
ISSN:1573-7799
DOI:10.1007/s10940-021-09493-x