IDAHO PILOT · STATEWIDE DATA VERIFIED · NATIONAL EXPANSION IN PROGRESS
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Crime Clarity

Every state's own arrest data tracks race and ethnicity as two separate fields. Almost none of them report both together. When only race is shown, Hispanic and Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) arrestees vanish into the "White" count — Hispanic because most public reporting doesn't separate the ethnicity field that already exists; MENA because federal standards don't give it a separate field at all. We pull arrest records straight from each state's own system to show what "White" is actually hiding — state by state, on a rolling basis.

Arrestees Analyzed
Hispanic, Coded "White"
Of All "White" Arrests
Of 44 Counties Covered
What We Found

The Numbers Behind the Number

Hidden Inside "White"
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Unknown or Not Reported
Idaho's own ethnicity field is left blank or unrecorded on a meaningful share of arrest records statewide. We show that gap plainly instead of rounding it away.
Every Idaho County
Sourced directly from the Idaho State Police's own NIBRS repository — not a sample, not an estimate. Reconciled record-for-record against the statewide total.
What This Is About

Two Boxes, One Number

Every Idaho arrest report tracks two different things about the person arrested: their Race (White, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, or Unknown) and their Ethnicity (Hispanic or Latino, or Not) — two separate boxes on the same form.

Most published crime statistics only show Race. That means a Hispanic arrestee of any race gets folded into whichever race box was checked — usually White — with no way to tell them apart from anyone else in that box.

Why it matters: when "White" arrest numbers get cited — in news coverage, in political arguments, in comparisons between groups — nobody citing them knows that number may be one-third or more Hispanic, because the standard published report never shows the split. That's not a rounding error. In Texas, it's the difference between "White" meaning one thing and meaning something else entirely for 56% of the people counted in it. You can't have an honest conversation about crime statistics with a number that's silently mixing two different things together.

We pulled each state's actual arrest records straight from its own reporting system and cross-referenced both fields to show what's actually inside the numbers everyone else reports as one — then checked our pull against each state's own official published report, where one exists, to confirm we're not the only source saying this.

The Two Fields
Data Element 49
Race of Arrestee
White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or Unknown.
Data Element 50
Ethnicity of Arrestee
Hispanic or Latino, Not Hispanic or Latino, or Unknown — reported as its own field, separate from race, per the FBI's NIBRS technical specification.
Source
Idaho State Police NIBRS Repository
Live query tool (nibrs.isp.idaho.gov). All 44 county pulls reconciled against the statewide total for internal consistency.
Cross-Checked
The Official PDF Doesn't Cross-Tabulate
Idaho's own published Crime In Idaho 2024 Statewide Arrest Profile lists Race and Ethnicity as two separate columns — never crossed. It cannot tell you how many "White" arrestees are Hispanic; only the live drilldown tool we use can. The published report's total (42,854 White) is within 1% of our live pull (42,421) — the small gap is expected, disclosed below, not hidden.
Data Currency
Why Numbers Shift Slightly Between Pulls
Texas DPS says it plainly in its own published reports: "The underlying data changes continuously... it may not be possible to replicate the figures... Slight variations in results obtained using identical queries are expected and normal." That's true of every state here — these are live databases, not frozen snapshots, and we'd rather show a number that moves than one that's stale.
Known Limitation
MENA Is Not Recoverable Here
Under current federal standards, people of Middle Eastern or North African origin are officially classified as "White" with no separate field — unlike Hispanic ethnicity, there's nothing in this data to split out. That population stays invisible inside "White" until federal reporting adopts the new MENA category (phase-in beginning 2028).
Open Question
County vs. Agency Reconciliation
ISP's own tool returns different statewide totals depending on whether you query by County or by Agency — a real discrepancy in the source system, not our pipeline. We've asked ISP's UCR program directly which figure is authoritative and will update this page when we hear back. The White/Hispanic split above reconciles cleanly under the County method we use; smaller race categories currently do not reconcile between the two methods.
The National Scorecard

Who Hides It, Who Doesn't

Every state tracks Race and Ethnicity as separate fields on its own arrest forms — what differs is whether the state's own public reporting keeps Hispanic arrestees separate from "White," or lets them quietly get folded in. This isn't a red-state or blue-state pattern — it cuts across party lines. "Hides It" states publish a "White" number that includes Hispanic arrestees with nothing to tell them apart. "Corrects It" states already exclude Hispanic from White by default. Live data, pulled directly from each state's own system.

State Lean Status White Total Hispanic in White % Hidden
A Different Problem

Registries That Don't Even Try

This is a separate finding from the arrest-data scorecard above — not "hidden in White," but "never tracked at all." Sex offender registries are public safety lookup tools, not built for aggregate reporting the way UCR crime data is. We read only the public Race field from each registrant record to build a statistical tally — no names, addresses, photos, or other identifying details were stored anywhere in this process. None of the three registries checked so far have an Ethnicity field whatsoever, so unlike arrest data, there's no way to even partially recover how many "White" registrants are Hispanic or MENA — that population is simply invisible here, with no hidden field left to check.

State Has Ethnicity Field? Registrants Scanned White Black Am. Indian/AK Native Asian/PI Unknown
Idaho, County by County

The Pilot State, In Detail

White-race arrestees only, since that's where the miscount hides. "Hisp. %" is the share of each county's White-coded arrestees who were separately marked Hispanic or Latino. "Unk./NR" combines Unknown and Not Reported ethnicity — the data-completeness gap, shown openly rather than smoothed over. 2024 data, sorted by total White-coded arrests.

County White Total Hispanic Not Hisp. Unk./NR Hisp. %
Next Phase

Growing the Scorecard

Idaho was the pilot. Seven states are live now, each pulled directly from its own public system — we're adding more on a rolling basis, using the identical NIBRS fields every state already reports to the FBI.

More states added on a rolling basis — target: all 50
Interactive map showing every state's classification at a glance
Year-over-year historical trend tracking, not just a single snapshot
County-level detail for every state, not just Idaho
Full methodology page with a source citation behind every published figure