The FBI released semiannual 2014 crime stats for America’s biggest cities last week, but don’t bother trying to find out how safe — or dangerous — life can be in Hono­lulu.

Even the state attorney general’s office that compiles islandwide crime data every year cannot get statistics from the Hono­lulu Police Department on crimes ranging from murder to motor vehicle theft.

Out of America’s 25 largest city and county law enforcement agencies, only HPD has failed to report crime statistics since 2012 for a city that claims to be one of the safest in the country.

"Wow," said University of Hawaii professor Meda Ches­ney-Lind, former vice president of the American Society of Criminology. "It’s a complete embarrassment."

Along with HPD, Kauai police also have not submitted crime data for the Garden Isle since 2012 to the state attorney general’s office, which collects crime statistics from each of the four county police departments and forwards them to the FBI.

The statistics are then released by the FBI for semiannual and annual reports of crime rates across the country — known as the national Uniform Crime Reporting program.

The Uniform Crime Reporting program was established by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1929 and has been administered by the FBI since 1930 — long before computerized record-keeping. The program tracks eight specific crimes from city, university and college, county, state, tribal and federal law enforcement agencies: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.

The FBI last week released nationwide data for the first half of 2014 for communities with populations of 100,000 or more — but had no information to share for Hono­lulu.

"We are concerned about how far they’ve fallen behind," said Paul Perrone, chief of research and statistics for the state attorney general’s office.

HPD spokes­woman Michelle Yu wrote in an email that staff shortages and problems with the department’s records management system have created a 16-month backlog for submitting crime statistics to the attorney general’s office.

But Yu said HPD last month sent data for August 2013.

"Currently, the department is able to compile crime statistics from dispatch calls and officers’ field reports," Yu wrote. "These are not affected by the backlog, and they are what the commanders and supervisors use in their daily work. The backlog occurs where the field reports are entered into the records system, and the department is currently working with a private vendor on a new records system that will simplify data entry. Roughly 400,000 reports are entered into the records management system annually."

The attorney general’s office has been told that HPD blames the lack of reporting on an antiquated records-keeping system that cannot keep up with changes to how crimes are to be reported.

"That couldn’t have come at a worse time for HPD, which isn’t going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix a system that’s on its way out," Perrone said. "As explained to us, the new system that will handle all the new UCR stuff keeps getting pushed back. So they’re having problems going live with their new system."

Kauai County spokes­woman Sarah Blane said Kauai police are updating their software to automatically generate data such as crime statistics.

"While I don’t have an exact timeline on when that will be completed, after many months of coding, I am told we are very close," Blane wrote in an email. "We are … communicating with the FBI and AG’s Office, and they are aware of our system updates."

The FBI estimates that almost 95 percent of Americans are served by departments that take part in the Uniform Crime Reporting program. In 2013 the FBI said that more than 18,000 city, county, state, tribal, higher-education and federal law enforcement agencies provided crime statistics about their communities.

Even the tiny community of Indian Creek Village, Fla. — with only 90 residents — reports its crime statistics.

The FBI also gets crime data from small communities like Arley, Ala. (population 353); Beech Bottom, W.Va. (population 514); and Skagway, Alaska (population 956).

Data are also available from New York City, which has a population of 8.4 million.

The FBI’s website allows researchers, students and ordinary citizens to review annual crime data for almost every city in the United States, and semiannual crime data for cities with populations over 100,000.

Honolulu’s most recent data on the FBI’s website come from 2010. Data from 2011, 2012, 2013 and the first six months of 2014 are missing.

Crime stats for Hono­lulu from 2011 and 2012 can be found online but not on the FBI site — only on the Hawaii attorney general’s website.

Those crime statistics are used by everyone from police chiefs to homebuyers to lawmakers to help influence a myriad of decisions, Perrone said.

Police agencies’ participation in the Uniform Crime Reporting program is required in a handful of states, Perrone said. But in Hawaii, reporting the data is "utterly, absolutely voluntary," he said. "That said, everyone recognizes this data is important to determine whether crime is up or down. It’s a social indicator along the lines of the GDP (gross domestic product)."

Perrone said he is regularly asked by everyone from island lawmakers to "schoolchildren in Texas writing papers" for the latest Hono­lulu crime statistics.

"Virtually everyone involved in crime and justice needs timely and accurate crime trend information," he said. "It also provides information for law enforcement agencies to determine how their resources should be allocated. A lot of federal grant applications require you to portray the nature and extent of the problem you’re trying to address, and they expect to see crime statistics in those applications."

In its latest December 2013 report, based on data from the four county police departments, the state attorney general’s office reported that Hawaii’s crime rate for 2012 was down overall by 2.4 percent — which represented "a new record low level."

Violent crime had fallen by 3.8 percent from the year before, and property crime was down 2.3 percent — both record low levels in the islands.

But especially following the economic meltdown in 2008 that dramatically altered life across America, cities such as Hono­lulu cannot lay claim to being relatively safe without data to back it up, Ches­ney-Lind said.

"As far as we know, in terms of violent crime, we think we’re in a pretty good situation," she said. "But we also know that things are not entirely rosy and we have a challenging property crime rate. These things can change on you. If your facts are two or three years out of date, that’s a problem. This should be a high priority for HPD — and especially for us as a tourist destination."