Understanding Police Homicides: What We Can Learn from the National Homicide Data Improvement Project

• In Event: Police Homicides

Abstract

The study of homicides by police has been hampered by significant problems with respect to the collection of data on this population of events. Prior studies have found that the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports, the National Center for Health Statistics’ National Vital Statistics System, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Death in Custody Reporting Program suffer from substantial underreporting and lack sufficient detail of homicides committed by police. Using data from our Ohio pilot project, which seeks to improve the quality of homicide data in the nation, we demonstrate the value of intensive collection of detailed information from multiple sources (i.e. police records, vital statistics records, the SHR, and newspaper articles) for understanding trends and patterns in police homicides from 1959 to 1988. We are creating a clustered random sample of homicides in 34 counties in Ohio, 1959-present, including police involved homicides and homicides of law enforcement officers. We would like to present our preliminary results from the more than 400 such homicides from the first three decades of our study.

Authors

• Randolph Roth, The Ohio State University

• Wendy Regoeczi, Cleveland State University Ohio

• Rania Issa, University of Akron