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

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Abstract

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.

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Notes

  1. There exists a notable literature on the use of non-lethal force by police officers, as well. See, for example, Klinger (1995), Garner et al. (1996), and Terrill and Mastrofski (2002).

  2. We should note that the 2016 LEMAS has been recently released to the public.

  3. The UCR Handbook (UCR 2014) mentions that all decedents should be listed as “victims” while individuals responsible for the homicide should be listed as “offenders”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA

    Brian Karl Finch, Kyla Thomas & D. Brian Burghart

  2. San Diego State University, San Diego, USA

    Audrey N. Beck

  3. University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis County, USA

    David Klinger

  4. Dolan Consulting Group, Raleigh, USA

    Richard R. Johnson

  5. Fatal Encounters, Reno, USA

    D. Brian Burghart

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  1. Brian Karl Finch
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  2. Kyla Thomas
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  3. Audrey N. Beck
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  4. D. Brian Burghart
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  5. David Klinger
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Correspondence to Brian Karl Finch.

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Finch, B.K., Thomas, K., Beck, A.N. et al. Assessing Data Completeness, Quality, and Representativeness of Justifiable Homicides in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports: A Research Note. J Quant Criminol 38, 267–293 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-021-09493-x

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