The FBI will begin collecting nationwide data on ethnicity next year to be published in its annual Uniform Crime Report, making it possible to test the assertion of some advocacy groups that police arrest Latinos -- a multiracial ethnic group -- at higher rates than non-Hispanic whites. The recent move marks the revival of an earlier FBI effort to collect crime data by ethnicity, abandoned in 1987. Currently, the FBI only tabulates arrest data by race, with categories for white, black, Asian or Pacific Islander, and American Indian or Alaska Native. Latinos, who can belong to any race provided they have Latin American heritage, effectively vanish from the agency’s published records. The...
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