1110-0002_Support Statement

SUPPORTING STATEMENT

1110-0002

Supplementary Homicide Report

The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program requests a 3-year extension of this currently approved collection.

A. Justification.

1. Necessity of Information Collection

Under the authority of Title 28, U.S. Code, Section 534, Acquisition, Preservation and Exchange of Identification Records; Appointment of Officials, June 11, 1930, the FBI was designated by the Attorney General to acquire, collect, classify, and preserve national homicide data from local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies throughout the country as part of the Uniform Crime Reports in order to generate reliable information.

Forms 1-704, Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) provides for the national UCR Program a record of each homicide incident including details regarding the victim, offender, their relationship, the weapon used, and the circumstances in which each criminal homicide, justifiable homicide, and manslaughter by negligence is committed.

This information collection is a necessity in order for the FBI to maintain a database and serve as the national clearinghouse for the collection and dissemination of homicide data and to ensure publication in Crime in the United States (CIUS).

2. Needs and Uses

UCR crime statistics are used in many ways and serve many purposes. They provide law enforcement with data for use in budget formulation, planning, resources allocation, assessment of police operations, etc., to help address the crime problem at various levels. Chambers of commerce and tourism agencies examine these data to see how they impact the particular geographic jurisdictions they represent. Criminal justice researchers study the nature, cause, and movement of crime over time. Legislators draft anti-crime measures using the research findings and recommendation of law enforcement administrators, planners, and public and private entities concerned with the problem of crime. The news media use the crime statistics provided by the FBI UCR Program to inform the public about the state of crime.

The 1-704 form is needed in order for law enforcement agencies to submit supplementary homicide data to the FBI on hard copy. Homicide data serve as a valuable resource to city, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as by Academe, other government agencies, public, and media. Dissemination of the homicide data are provided in the annual publication CIUS or when requested. These homicide data are of invaluable use for research and statistical analysis. Examples of agencies' uses are:

a. The FBI serves as the national clearinghouse for storage of all homicide statistics; therefore, the data is available upon request to any requester. The Consortium at the University of Michigan obtains annual SHR data files.

b. Law enforcement uses the UCR data for administration, operation, management, and to determine effectiveness and placement of task forces.

c. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), utilizes the UCR Program’s violent crime (of which murder is a part) data in awarding local law enforcement formula grants.

d. Annual UCR data are provided to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. This central repository serves as a single facility from which colleges/universities can obtain social science data.

e. National Center for Juvenile Justice obtains yearly UCR SHR data files to incorporate in the agency’s database.

3. Use of Information Technology

Currently, 85 percent of participating law enforcement agencies submits this form electronically. Electronic submissions downloaded from state UCR systems are received via Law Enforcement Online, (LEO) e-mail ucrstat@leo.gov. For those agencies unable to submit data electronically, data are received on hard copy. The FBI UCR Program provides this form as a PDF printable form on the Internet at www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/reporting-forms at this time.

Many states that participate in the FBI UCR Program have a centralized repository serving as a state UCR Program. Several state UCR Programs have established electronic communications with their law enforcement agencies throughout their state. Agencies submit data to their state UCR Program who in turn forward it to the FBI.

4. Efforts to Identify Duplication

This information collection was authorized in direct response to the enactment of Title 28, U.S. Code, Section 534, Acquisition, and Exchange of Identification Records; Appointment of Officials, June 11, 1930. The FBI is the only agency collecting extensive data on homicides in the U.S.; however, the Department of Justice administers another statistical program, BJS that publishes ten years of homicide trends in the United States. BJS uses the FBI UCR Program’s homicide data.

5. Minimizing Burden on Small Entities

This information will have no significant impact on small businesses. The law enforcement community requested that the forms be collected on a monthly basis since police records are run on a calendar month, however, the FBI minimizes burden on small law enforcement agencies by allowing them to submit quarterly, twice a year, or once a year. Although monthly is recommended, upon approval by the FBI UCR Program, agencies can submit data at intervals that minimizes the burdens to the agency.

6. Consequences of Not Conducting or Less Frequent Collection

In order to serve as the national repository for crime reporting and to produce a reliable dataset, the FBI collects monthly statistics on homicides reported by participating FBI UCR Program contributors. There is an ever-increasing need for timely and accurate data dissemination by the FBI to assist our partners in law enforcement.

Although monthly reports are preferred by some agencies, the FBI UCR Program has agencies submit data quarterly, twice a year, and even once a year. Upon approval by the FBI UCR Program agencies can submit data at intervals that minimizes the burdens to the agency.

Law enforcement agencies use UCR data to track crime, task force placement, staffing levels, officer placement. The UCR data is used for administration, operation, management, and to determine effectiveness and placement of task forces. Agencies will justify task forces, staffing levels, and officer counts compared to other law enforcement agencies in order to receive additional staffing levels or equipment. Some agencies use other agencies’ crime statistics and staffing levels to justify their own crime statistics and staffing levels in order to obtain funding.

In past years, a committee was formed to examine less frequent reporting, below are the results. This committee was chaired by Dr. Peter P. Lejins, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland; Dr. Charlton F. Chute, Director, Institute of Public Administration, New York City; and Mr. Stanley R. Schrotel, Chief of Police, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Frequency of Reports from Cooperating Police Departments

The committee has very seriously considered the possibility of diminishing the frequency of submission of the statistical reports by the cooperating police departments. This would mean abandoning the present scheme of getting monthly reports and substituting perhaps a quarterly or semiannual report from the police instead. The Committee has, however, rejected the idea of any change in this direction, in spite of the fact that it appears reasonable to assume that a report submitted quarterly, for instance, would decrease the amount of work to be done by the local police departments as compared to a monthly report. This could then perhaps be, used as an argument for requesting an increased amount of information in the less frequent reports. There is the danger that with the pressure for monthly reports removed, the police departments might become somewhat less punctilious and instead of producing more data for the three-months report, might actually become less precise and, not having gotten up a report for a longer period, could conceivably have difficulty in getting data together for the three-months report. Besides, of course, all analyses which are based on monthly reports, for instance the fluctuation of crime frequency in the course of the year, might suffer considerably. After studying this matter, the Committee decided not to recommend any change in the current practice.

7. Special Circumstances

SHR data are collected/received from the FBI UCR Program participants on a monthly basis. The FBI's UCR Program has established various time frames and deadlines for acquiring the monthly data. Monthly reports/submissions should be received at the FBI by the seventh day after the close of each month. Annual deadlines are also designated in order to collect/assess receipt of monthly submissions. There are times when special circumstances may cause an agency to request an extension. The FBI's UCR Program has the authority to grant these extensions. Participation in the national UCR Program is voluntary.

8. Public Comments and Consultations

The 60 and 30 day notices have been submitted to the Forms Desk and published in the Federal Register with no public comments received.

9. Provision of Payments or Gifts to Respondents

The FBI's UCR Program does not provide any payments or gifts to respondents.

10. Assurance of Confidentiality

This information collection does not contain personally identifiable information that may reveal the identity of an individual it is obtained from public agencies and are, therefore, in the public domain. The FBI UCR Program does not assure confidentiality.

11. Justification for Sensitive Questions

The information collection does not seek information of a sensitive nature.

12. Estimate of Respondent's Burden

The estimated cost of the respondent's burden for this data collection is as follows:

Number of respondents 18,233

Frequency of responses 12/year

Total annual responses 139,032

Minutes per response 9 minutes

Annual hour burden 20,855 hours

Number of respondents:

Summary Reporting System (SRS) 11,586

National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) 6,647

Total number of respondents

11,586 +6,647 = 18,233

Burden Formula for SRS:

1-704: 11,586 respondents x 12 responses/year = 139,032 total annual responses

139,032 x 9 minutes = 20,855 total annual hour burden

60 minutes (1 hour)

Burden Formula for NIBRS:

This burden estimate does not include the 6,647 NIBRS agencies; the NIBRS burden hours are captured in the NIBRS Information Collection Request recently sent to OMB for approval.

13. Estimate of Cost Burden

There are no direct costs to law enforcement to participate in the FBI UCR Program other than their time to respond. With the renewal of this form respondents are not expected to incur any capital, start-up, or system maintenance costs associated with this information collection. Costs to agency Records Management Systems (RMS) are very difficult to obtain. Vendors do not divulge costs due to the fact that vendors charge differently from agency to agency. Many costs are built into the vendors contracts. Agencies do not know costs to system changes because these charges can be built into their budgets for years. Depending on the vendor contracts, changes mandated by law are included within the original contract with no other additional costs. Most agencies already collect the new UCR categories within their individual RMS. However, an estimate has been projected that agencies pay an $18,000 maintenance fee every year for system maintenance costs, an average of $846,000 for the State Programs’ RMS maintenance fee for all of the UCR collections. UCR provides electronic forms, tallybook, and workbooks for those agencies not able to change their RMS.

14. Cost to Federal Government

According to the cost object provided by FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division, Resource Management Section, Financial Management Unit the following are generalized projections based upon prior collection activity as well as activities anticipated over the next three years for all the FBI UCR Program’s information collections in which the SHR ICR is a part.

Staff Costs for Data Collection and Processing

CSMU Correspondence/Documents $458,966

Data Requests $162,592

Data Collection/Analysis $1,771,397

Publications/Reports $307,368

Total Cost to Federal Government $2,700,323

15. Reason for Change in Burden

There is no increase in burden on the individual respondents; however, the overall annual burden hours have decreased from 32,373 to 20,855, which is a decrease of 11,518 burden hours and due to the NIBRS agencies burden hours being accounted for in the NIBRS ICR.

16. Anticipated Publication Plan and Schedule

Published data are derived from data submissions furnished to the FBI from local, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies throughout the country. National, regional, and state data are published in the annual edition of CIUS.

Request for missing January-June arrest data August and September

Request for missing 12 month arrest data February and March, following year

Deadline to submit data Mid-March

Data Processing/Analysis July-May

Publication of data September, of following year/CIUS

17. Display of Expiration Date

All information collected under this clearance will display the OMB Clearance Number and Expiration Date.

18. Exception to the Certification Statement

The FBI’s CJIS Division does not request an exception to the certification of this information collection.