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The most high-profile hate crime in Hawaii in recent times came to its conclusion in March last year, when two Native Hawaiian men were sentenced for their attack of Chris Kunzelman.

That case attracted national attention because of the anti-white bias that the court found underpinned the incident on West Maui almost a decade ago.

Without revisiting the specifics of that case, reports of crime motivated by anti-white bias are relatively rare according to the from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Nationally, only 8% of hate crimes involved racial bias towards white victims compared to 29% against people of color, the FBIʻs 2022 report found.

Those same numbers would have us believe that the dynamic flips in the Aloha State to 41% of hate crimes , with anti-Black bias the next highest at 19% in 2022.

But, letʻs just stop right there for a moment because here is where we proceed with caution.

It turns out that our understanding of offenses in Hawaii, including hate crimes, has been incomplete and thatʻs hampered our ability to make meaningful national comparisons.

Happily that appears about to change, and here is why.

Up until 2021, the FBI had been primarily collating crime statistics for its Uniform Crime Reporting program using a system that had effectively been the same since the 1930s.

In January 2021 the FBI implemented a new standard for reporting crimes to the UCR program called the . NIBRS is , the FBI says, identifying "when and where crime takes place, what form it takes, and the characteristics of its victims and perpetrators."

The change initially created a major pothole in the crimes reported to the bureau in 2021 as many departments had not made the shift. The transition to the NIBRS system is a significant challenge for local departments and requires among other things, a half-million-dollar computer setup.

Only around 60% of agencies nationwide were able to report under the old system or NIBRS that year, the found.

There were – and continue to be – with only some states requiring their departments to submit data. The DOJ found that the 2022 NIBRS data represented around 73% of the population. Another 16% of agencies still submit using the old summary system, the FBI said.

But, there will never be 100% participation by law enforcement agencies in the NIBRS program.

So, the staggered adoption of the NIBRS standard by police departments means that extreme caution needs to be applied when tracking trends and attaching significance to the FBIʻs national data especially when comparing 2022 numbers with anything prior to the transition to NIBRS.

Thatʻs certainly the case here in Hawaii where the last of the four departments, Hawaii Police Department, only became NIBRS-accredited Oct. 2.

Maui PD got its certification last September, Kauai back in November 2021 and HPD has been on board since 2017.

The 2022 FBI numbers for Hawaii then, exclude Maui PD which was too late to be included in the reporting and Hawaii PD which had not qualified. That makes meaningful comparisons for last year impossible.

With all that said, the 100% NIBRS compliance of all four Hawaii police departments will significantly impact the level of detail we will have about crime going forward, according to Paul Perrone, head of and the state representative for the UCR program.

The major changes include the number of offenses that are tracked: 52 instead of the 10 currently, and a trove of additional data points. NIBRS also enables the inclusion of individual case files instead of just summaries.

And you can expect more crimes to be reported as a consequence of the change.

Thatʻs because the NIBRS data has a "no hierarchy" rule. Previously if multiple offenses occurred in the same incident, only the most serious of those would end up in the FBIʻs database. Some 12% of all crime incidents involve multiple offenses.

And the AGʻs office is very close to launching a new state data dashboard that will facilitate more cross-tabulations and opportunities for study, Perrone said.

Significantly, the NIBRS reporting will provide a level of demographic detail about the victims of crime that has never been available before. Both intimate partner violence and hate crimes will be highlighted topic areas within the revamped Hawaii dashboard, according to Perrone.

Dreaming Of A White Christmas?

Spare a thought for the 549 Vermonters who the U.S. Census Bureau believes are residing in Hawaii instead of catching the last of the fall foliage and snuggling up in their sweaters back in the Green Mountain state.

Close behind them will be the 743 South Dakota natives who are missing the early flakes forecast for late October in the home of Mount Rushmore.

We know this about our neighbors thanks to the annual snapshot from the bureau called the .

The Vermont/Hawaii connections of course date back at least as far as Hiram Bingham, born in Bennington, Vermont in 1789 and a leading light of the Protestant Christian mission to the islands.

The bureau also dropped its . These are one-year estimates based on the American Community Survey, so the margins of error can be consequential.

California took in over 10,500 former Hawaii residents last year, give or take 2,500. And yes, apparently some 38 Hawaii residents decided theyʻd had enough of endless sunshine and made their way to Vermont last year.

Mind you, the margin of error is +/- 62.

The census bureau is one thing, and Google Search is another.

Here are Hawaii's three most aspired states to move to according to an analysis of Google search traffic in October by real estate marketing company Hyperwired.

1. Washington
2. Texas
3. California

But as always, the grass is always greener because the Evergreen State also makes it onto the list of the top three states where users are searching about relocating to Hawaii.

1. Alaska
2. Oregon
3. Washington

Tracking Keiki Ready

You can now track the progress of Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke's through an interactive map put together by the .

Youʻll recall the program launched in January is aiming to have 465 classrooms for 3- and 4-year-olds in place by 2032.

But where do those classrooms need to be?

SFAʻs Executive Director Keone Farias said the authority is using data from the census bureau and its education partners to better understand "the capacity of an area, the number of current students, the number of kindergarten classrooms, and whether the population is growing or declining."ʻ

You can also follow spending and construction progress at .