analysis
Written by Len Cabrera
The first part of the Booking Log Summary (found here) provides a demographic breakdown of individuals booked into the Alachua County Jail in 2023. It also shows the number of people booked multiple times or with multiple claims, and provides a basic breakdown of claim types. , arrests that do not track individual charges (out-of-county, out-of-state, probation violations, failure to appear, etc.) and arrests that do (warrants and affidavits). It concludes with a breakdown of Mitimas bookings by law enforcement. Part 2 looks at actual charges and other crime statistics for 2023 and compares them to 2022.
Classification of crime
In the daily booking records produced by the Alachua County Jail, charges are listed in text boxes, but the abbreviations are often inconsistent and there is not enough detail to accurately record the full scope of the crimes alleged. It is often missing. Rather than compiling prices at the end of the year as in previous years, this year we’ve broken them down into 37 broad categories on a daily basis. We categorized them into crimes against persons, crimes against property, other crimes, and weapons crimes.
The Florida Incident-Based Reporting System (FIBRS) also uses 37 categories, but ours are different and are based on information that appears in the booking log. For example, booking logs typically only list “Petit Theft” or “Grand Theft” with an amount listed. FIBRS lists nine different types of theft: pickpocketing, purse snatching, shoplifting, theft from motor vehicles, motor vehicle parts, theft from buildings, theft from coin-operated machines, all others, and motor vehicle theft. I am.
However, it collects more detailed information about weapons crimes than FIBRS. Although FIBRS only uses “weapons crimes,” it was able to use arrest reports and court records to distinguish between gun crimes and crimes involving other weapons. We also isolated charges for several other types of weapons.
We found 85 other crimes in the booking log for 2023, but were unable to track them down for various reasons. They were not included in the FIBRS, occurred only a few times, and were mostly administrative or public order crimes.
After updating the categories in early 2023, we went back through all booking logs from 2022 and reclassified the violations in the same way as in 2023 for comparison.
The table below shows the number of bookings and prices for the 37 categories we tracked. This includes only new local charges (no out-of-county or out-of-state warrants) related to arrest for failure to appear (FTA), violation of probation (VOP), or sentenced individuals. Charges have been ruled out. This is because these charges are related to the original crime (when you were first arrested), not a new crime. Again, as in Part 1, “bookings” refer to individuals registered with the Alachua County Jail, and “charges” refer to the crimes those individuals are alleged to have committed (see below table for additional information). (see notes).
Changes from 2022 by category
Overall, crimes against persons increased slightly, by 1.5% due to bookings and 3.1% due to accusations. Crimes against property increased dramatically by 24.7% on a booking basis and 202.4% on a prosecution basis. If we exclude the two people who each had 1,766 charges (credit card theft), the total number of prosecutions for crimes against property would drop to 2,231, but still a significant 17.1% increase over 2022. . Other crimes decreased slightly by 1.1% for bookings and 1.7% for charges. Weapons crime has fallen significantly, but this belies the reported increase in gun violence in 2023.
The number of people booked for gun fees increased by 21.4% in bookings and 16.6% in fees. Despite these increases, overall weapons crime decreased. This is primarily due to changes in the law that have significantly reduced bookings and charges for carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.
Based on the booking, domestic and external assaults and assaults both increased by more than 10% from 2022 to 2023, as did sexual assault (up 17.8%). Violent crimes (murder, sexual assault, robbery, non-domestic assault) increased by 7.8% in bookings and 9.5% in charges.
Other crimes that saw a significant increase included other thefts (30.6%), mischief (29.7%), trespassing (61.4%), sex offender registration violations (87%), and firearm possession crimes (21.4%). can be mentioned. These may be the result of increased enforcement, but do not necessarily mean that crime will increase.
Alachua County Sheriff’s Office Data
To see how differences in jail bookings correspond to differences in actual crime statistics, we examined data from the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office (ASO) and the Gainesville Police Department (GPD).
ASO provides crime reporting data to City Protect, a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions. This system essentially records all incidents entered into ASO’s computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. ASO just switched to this system last year, so we weren’t able to compare 2022 numbers to 2021. The table below shows ASO incidents reported to City Protect that match exactly the categories used to summarize the booking logs.
The total number of ASO incidents decreased by nearly 6,500 (2.8%) compared to 2022. Theft, trespassing, and criminal mischief all increased significantly, although not all of the year-over-year changes matched changes in the booking log. It was in the reservation log. Oddly enough, the two crime types were very different in the booking log and CAD cases.
- Robbery: 12.1% decrease in booking logs, 10.4% increase in CAD incidents
- Sexual battery: 17.8% increase in booking logs, 21.9% decrease in CAD incidents
It is important to note that a CAD incident at ASO does not necessarily mean that a crime has been committed or that a person has been arrested.
In 2023, ASO handled 16,849 incidents in response to some type of disturbance. These include armed disturbances, civil wars, domestic disturbances, physical fights, altercations, and trespassing (i.e. all her S22 codes). This is a 6.8% increase over 2022, and in 2023 he will have 46 cases per day.
Florida Department of Law Enforcement Data
Another way to research crime in Alachua County is to use the Florida Incident-Based Reporting System (FIBRS), which is administered by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). Unfortunately, the 2023 data will only be updated until September 2023. Complete data for 2023 will not be released until February 28, according to the FDLE website.
The table below compares GPD’s FIBRS data through the first three quarters of 2022 and 2023. Although the complete data set includes data from his ASO, GPD, and the University of Florida Police Department, crime change is over 100% in his ASO, suggesting the following: ASO’s 2022 data is not complete. According to FIBRS, all three overarching categories (violence, property, and other) increased by 3.7%, 5.9%, and 3.3%, respectively, from 2022 to 2023.
Because the reservation log uses Florida statute terminology, the types of fees listed in FIBRS do not match what is recorded in the reservation log. According to FDLE, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program standardizes crime data based on nationally relevant crime definitions instead of using state-specific statutory classifications. Masu.”
For example, FIBRS defines “aggravated assault” as “an unlawful attack by one person against another in which the offender uses a dangerous weapon or displays it in a threatening manner, or the victim is clearly is defined as “causing severe or serious physical injury or resulting in serious bodily injury.” There was a risk of serious injury/there was intent to cause serious injury. ” This includes charges in Florida for aggravated assault and aggravated assault. FIBRS defines a “simple assault” as “an unlawful physical attack by one person against another in which the offender is not in possession of a dangerous weapon and the victim suffers from an apparent fracture or loss of teeth. , without obvious severe or aggravated bodily injury with the possibility of internal injury.” Injuries, severe lacerations, or loss of consciousness. ” According to Florida statute, this is just battery. It appears that simple assault charges in Florida do not count against FIBRS.
When I asked how to match the assault and battery charges in my booking log with the FIBRS charges, FDLE referred me to Criminal Justice Data Transparency (CJDT) arrest reports. This data set contains 681,154 rows of data containing reported arrests from 52 counties. (Florida has 67 counties.) This means that 11,743 arrest dates are blank and others are clearly wrong (117 cases before 2014, his one case in 1958). ), this is very dirty data. The Alachua County data only has 775 rows, and only two of his rows have valid dates, so it wasn’t very helpful.
Data from Gainesville Police Department
The FIBRS numbers do not match third-quarter data that GPD submitted to the Gainesville City Commission on Nov. 2. The slide below from GPD’s presentation shows that violent crime is up 7.3% and property crime is up 8.3%.
We asked GPD to explain the differences between this slide and the FIBRS data. As a result, the report was reviewed and the numbers could change depending on the reporting date as incidents could be reclassified from criminal to non-criminal or vice versa. He also said that some reporting on violent crime uses the number of victims, while others use the number of incidents. For example, this is why the FIBRS murder count is 11 (persons), while the GPD submission to the City Commission is 8 (incidents).
GPD released full year statistics at the Gainesville City Commission meeting on February 1st. The slide below is from his GPD presentation and shows that from 2022 to 2023, violent crime increased by 4.37% and property crime increased by 7.27%.
The full-year comparison to 2022 looks better than it has been since Q3, when homicides went from up 14% (1 more than 2022) to 27% (up 3). Please note in particular. GPD Deputy Chief Nelson Moya told the city commission on Feb. 1 that there will be 14 homicides and 16 homicide victims in 2023. It is also noted that the increase in robbery and theft rates worsened further after the fourth quarter numbers were added.
Gun incident in Gainesville
GPD also provided us with updated numbers on firearms incidents (shootings and seizures) to compare with the information they provided us last year. Based on GPD numbers, shooting incidents decreased by 23 (13.5%) from 2022 to 2023 after increasing by 45 (26.4%) from 2021 to 2022. Unfortunately, the number of people injured in shooting incidents increased by 13 people (27.7%).
The number of firearms seized by GPD also decreased from 2022 to 2023. Even though the number of seizures decreased by 43 (10.1%) from 2022 to 2023, the 2023 figure is still 13.6% higher than in 2021. In the past three years, all firearms he has confiscated by GPD (excluding BB/pellet guns) have been handguns. “Assault-type” (i.e., AR and AK) firearms were only 2% of the weapons seized, and BB/pellet guns were seized more than twice as many times as “assault-type” firearms.
Based on booking logs, ASO CAD reports, and GPD crime statistics, the number of shootings decreased in 2023 (even though more people were booked for firearm offenses).
Violent crimes, property crimes, trespassing, and mischief crimes involving property damage all increased.
Almost all of the data sources we used showed similar trends to rates collected from booking logs, with one notable exception being sexual assault. According to booking logs, sexual assault bookings increased by 31.2%, while ASO’s CAD cases showed a 21.9% decrease and GPD’s FIBRS numbers showed a 10.4% decrease.
All data sources show an increase in violent crime and property crime from 2022 to 2023, as well as significant increases in trespassing with property damage and criminal mischief.
