CODE 123: FINAL PROJECT
Data set profile: City of St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Hate Crime Statistics for 2020
The Metropolitan Police Department acts as the contributor to this data set. There is no specified data set creator or contributor designated to create or contribute to the Metropolitan Police Department Hate Crime Data Set of 2020. I do believe it could be possible that the Department may have a statistical crime analyzer or some sort who may curate this data. Although the sources of their data aren’t extremely clear, the sources of their data could be any crime cases that have a motivation based strictly on a specified identity of the victim. They possibly could also have a predetermined case file dedicated to hate crimes. Once again, a clear reason for creating or compiling this data set is uncertain. I believe that they created this data set because they wanted to reflect on the hate crimes within the St. Louis Region in 2020. The data set doesn’t describe any specific uses, I believe that it possibly has been used to address and document crime cases that have a motivation based strictly on a specified identity of the victim.
The structure of the data set is in an Excel file formatted in CSV. The reference guide provided on the website states 23 columns include; complaint number, occurrence, both the victim(s) and the offender(s) age(18 years of age or older), total number of both victims and offenders, offender race code, location, motivation, and victim type. The effect that it may have on pertaining on how the data can be used may be to address the common motivations behind hate crimes or even the more common areas where hate crimes occur. I believe that without the reference guide it would have been difficult to understand the structure and the fields that are within the file. Unfortunately, there isn’t a creator’s description of the data set. To find any possible specific ways in which the creator described their choices would be through the reference guide. A question I would ask the creator based on the data set and the reference guide: Why their duplicated columns with similar codes? For example, columns S through W all are based on motivation that have a motivation code and description that mean the same things. Why would that be beneficial? Without knowing the creator, I could imagine that their goal in creating this data set would be to provide a statistical analysis of hate crime data. This may intentionally shape how the City of St. Louis Metropolitan Department views hate crimes. I would use this data to bring about awareness of what exactly a hate crime is and educate the public on how to notify the police when a hate crime incident occurs so that more data can be contributed. This data helps me understand the complexity of MOBOT and its surroundings because it demonstrates how important justice truly is not only to victims of crime but within the community. As we help MOBOT work toward reparative justice one of the biggest ways I believe we can do this is by educating the public and getting accessible learning resources available.