ExtremismHate incidents are underreported. Now, there’s an app for that
Despite the FBI recording an all-time high in hate-motivated incidents in 2017 (the most recent year’s statistics available) the number is likely much higher. Low reporting from victims to police and inconsistent reporting from police to federal authorities have created a massive gap in how we understand hate in America. Researchers from the University of Utah want to fill that gap with an app.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is responsible for tracking hate crimes across the country, but the data are notoriously unreliable. Despite the FBI recording an all-time high in hate-motivated incidents in 2017 (the most recent year’s statistics available) the number is likely much higher. Low reporting from victims to police and inconsistent reporting from police to federal authorities have created a massive gap in how we understand hate in America.
Researchers from the University of Utah want to fill that gap with an app.
Emily Nicolosi, researcher, and Richard Medina, professor of geography, along with the DIGIT Lab developed an app that allows people to report incidents of hate. Utah says that the app, the first of its kind, accepts reports beyond crimes captured in police records. Users from around the country can document all incident types, from derogatory epithets written in bathrooms to slurs yelled from a car window in addition to violent assaults.
“The major problem we’re dealing with is that hate crimes are so underreported, not only to police, but from police to the federal government,” said Nicolosi. “There are cases when it can be difficult to report hate to the police, especially for undocumented people. We’re hoping that this could be a space where people feel comfortable.”
The researchers and the DIGIT lab are housed in the Department of Geography at the U. The app, called the Hate Incident Reporting System, is currently available on Google Play and should be available on Apple’s App Store shortly.
“We decided to create this while we were doing research on hate crimes. The overall quality and completeness of available data is terrible,” said Medina. The FBI defines a hate crime as “a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity.”
