Quality of Chicago Supplementary Homicide Reports Data Compared to the Chicago Homicide Dataset

Since the Supplementary Homicide Reports has been and continues to be the source of much of our knowledge about lethal violence in the United States, it is important to know just how good that source is. To evaluate the completeness and accuracy of Supplementary Homicide Reports data in one city, the Bureau of Justice Statistics asked the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority to conduct a case-by-case comparison of the 1,784 homicides recorded in the Chicago Homicide Dataset in 1993 or 1994 to homicides recorded in the Supplementary Homicide Reports for those years. This report, the results of the comparison, provide information about the quality of Supplementary Homicide Reports data in Chicago.