Researcher Questions Hate-Crime Increase Under Trump, Points to Hoaxes, Flawed Data Analysis
By Petr Svab
April 14, 2019 Updated: April 15, 2019
A Kentucky researcher doubts reports of a growing hate-crime problem in the United States in recent years, arguing that the increase in hate-crime reports in 2017 can mostly be explained away as hoaxed crimes and erroneously interpreted data.
Hate crimes increased by some 17.2 percent between 2016 and 2017, according to the latest FBI data. But Wilfred Reilly, assistant professor at Kentucky State University, says the increase was mainly caused by the fact that about 1,000 more law enforcement agencies reported data to the FBI in 2017.
“To be responsible for the entire surge, each agency [of the 1,000] would have to report exactly one hate crime,†he pointed out via email. “I believe with reason—given the average agency has reported between 0.44 and 0.63 hate crimes annually in recent years, and that high-crime agencies are more likely to withhold data from the FBI in the first place—that almost all of the surge is due to this technical change in reporting rates.â€
https://www.theepochtimes.com/researcher-questions-hate-crime-hike-under-trump-points-to-hoaxes-flawed-data-analysis_2879370.html
