Common myths about the new FBI crime statistics, debunked
By: Judd Legum
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
This week, the FBI released its report on crime in the United States during 2023. The report aggregates data from over 16,000 law enforcement agencies that collectively cover over 94% of U.S. residents. It found a large decline in murders compared to 2022 (-11.3%), and moderate but still significant declines in violent crime overall (-3.0%) and property crime (-2.4%).
Former President Donald Trump and his Republican allies, however, insist that America is in the midst of an unprecedented "crime wave." They argue that the FBI data collected through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is incomplete or fraudulent. In a September 12 post on X, Trump cited the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey to claim that there has been a 40% increase in violent crime since he left office. "Kamala Crime is destroying America, and gangs are taking over!" Trump insisted.
To sort through the confusion, Popular Information spoke with Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, creator of the Real-Time Crime Index, and one of the nation's leading experts in crime statistics.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Popular Information: Can you explain what, in your view, are the most important takeaways from the recent FBI report on crime in the United States during 2023?
Jeff Asher: The murder trend—the decline—is the largest we've ever seen, based on the data we have, which goes back to 1960. While it's not the full history of the nation, it's the largest percentage change recorded over that period, in terms of fewer victims from one year to the next. That's significant because murder is the most serious offense, with the highest societal cost, and it's the one we have the most confidence in. Everything else tends to be underreported to some degree, but we believe the murder count is fairly accurate.
For violent crime, a 3% decline met expectations. It's nothing unusual and aligns with what the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) baseline shows. What's more important than looking at a one-year change is to compare where we are now to where we were five, ten, or 35 years ago. In 2023, the violent crime rate was virtually equal to 2014's level, which was the lowest since 1970. The country has a lower level of violent crime than it had 35 years ago, and while the numbers fluctuate, there's no dramatic increase or decrease. A 3% decline is good, but it's more "steady as she goes" than anything drastic.
Looking ahead to 2024, the data so far shows an even larger decline in murder. By the end of the year, the murder rate could be at or below the 2019 level, heading closer to the historic lows of 2013-2014, rather than the spike we saw in 2020.
PI: Trump is using the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to argue that violent crime has increased dramatically since he left office in 2020. Is this a valid use of the data?
JA: No, I would strongly caution against using percent changes with NCVS. First, murder is what spiked in 2020, and NCVS doesn't measure murder because it's a survey, and murder victims can't respond. So you're already excluding the most notable crime trend of the last four years. Second, since NCVS is a survey, there's a margin of error that gets ignored when you focus on percent changes. Violent crime might have been up between 2020 and 2023, but it could also have been up just a little—or not at all—depending on how you interpret the confidence intervals. When you compare 2023 with 2019, BJS found that violent crime wasn't statistically different. So focusing solely on 2020 can give a distorted view of the trend.
If you dig deeper into specific offenses, like rape, NCVS might show a 42% increase, but the lower and upper bounds overlap. So it might have been up 42%, or it might have been down. This is how margins of error work. It's like polling: if a poll shows Trump up five points, but the margin of error is 4.4%, he could be up 14 points or down nine. Ignoring the margin of error leads to misleading conclusions.
PI: Another argument being made by Trump, and others online, is that the FBI data isn't accurate because it doesn't include all the cities. Is that true?
JA: The data is incomplete in the sense that it only covers 94.3% of the population, but it's always been incomplete. That's not unique to 2023. Historically, 5-6% of the population isn't covered, and the FBI estimates that portion. But it's mostly smaller cities that don't report, and these cities tend to have less crime. Only two out of 90 cities with populations over 250,000 didn't submit data in 2023. So the FBI is only estimating a small portion of the crime, and those estimates are consistent with what we see from other sources like the CDC and the Gun Violence Archive, particularly for murder and gun violence.
PI: Trump has called the FBI data "fraudulent," suggesting it's being manipulated by the Biden administration. Is that possible?
JA: Having worked in the federal government, I don't think a secret like that could be kept. We also have independent sources. We recently launched the Real-Time Crime Index, which gathers data from over 300 agencies, and it shows nearly identical trends to the FBI's data. Other external sources, like the Gun Violence Archive and the CDC, also align with the FBI's findings. If the FBI had reported something like a 4% increase in murder last year, I would have questioned it. But the data was exactly what we expected, based on other sources. That consistency gives us confidence in the accuracy of the FBI's numbers.
PI: Some argue that the data doesn't mean much because people have stopped reporting crimes, believing they won't be prosecuted. Is that a valid concern?
JA: I doubt many prosecutors are refusing to prosecute murder. Also, we have external sources like the CDC and the Gun Violence Archive that back up the trends in the FBI data. NCVS actually measures whether people are reporting crimes, and over the last five years, there hasn't been a significant change in the rate at which people say they report crimes to the police.
PI: Is there any evidence that undocumented immigrants are fueling a crime wave?
JA: I don't see any evidence of that. And if it's happening, it's within the context of an overall decline in reported crime. It's also not showing up in the places you would expect to see it if there were a surge in crime driven by undocumented immigrants.
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Did you look at the FBI report? The FBI report shows 499 homicides for Chicago, Chicago itself reported 617 homicides in 2023. That is a 20% discrepancy, the Senate hearing found dozens of cities like this.
That is really a spin piece.
The FBI made it more difficult for local police to share crime statistics and many big cities don't share their crime stats with the FBI, thus the FBI info is seriously incomplete:
"For more than 100 years, the FBI has been collecting crime data from local police departments across the country through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which has been the gold standard of national crime statistics.
By 2020, almost every law enforcement agency was included in the FBI’s database. Some agencies reported topline numbers, such as the total number of murders or car thefts, through the Summary Reporting System. Others reported granular incident data with details about each reported crime through the newer National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
Then it all changed in 2021 . In an effort to fully modernize the system, the FBI stopped taking data from the old summary system and only accepted data through the new system. Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn’t catch up with the changes on time.
In some cases, the FBI didn’t even have enough information to make an estimation. Here are a few examples of what the FBI could not include in its 2021 crime report:
State-level violent crime estimations for eight states: California, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. In several of these states, crime is a hotly contested issue in the midterm election.
The number of violent crimes, murders, and aggravated assaults for the West.
The number of violent crime victims who are Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.
The Problem With The FBI’s Missing Crime Data | The Marshall Project
I know you are desperate to claim crime has never been worse, but there is no evidence at all that is true.
Even look at the graph Nerm linked to. There is nothing at all unusual about crime rates in the past 3 years.
I'm not interested in someone's opinion.
Facts are facts. The FBI isn't collecting all the statistics.
Their partial estimates have been used by the left to gaslight everyone.
I'm not worried at all. The people who live in big blue cities KNOW if there is more crime. I expect them to vote accordingly.
There is more coverage of crime due to social media. There is no "more" crime.
The people who live there know. And btw, only about half of violent crime victims ever report it to the police, according to the latest crime victimization survey that the Justice Department released earlier this fall.
This is an old old story. How about in 2018 when the crime rate was higher than it is now, were only half of victims reporting? Must have been .
The truth is that crime rates over the past three years are nothing out of the ordinary, period.
Based on what?
The same incomplete stats?
The crime rate began to change dramatically with the 2020 riots & the rise of Soros backed DAs and the defund the police movement. It is going to be really hard, if not impossible, to restore the level of safety we once had.
In other words, the idea that crime is higher than its ever been before is a lie.
The actual data shows that Trump is right and the author of this seed is attempting to mislead. Check the data yourself.
The data shows a significant increase for all types of victimizations from 2021 to 2022. Joe Biden really was the President who oversaw this across the board increase in crime. What changed under Biden's leadership? Irregular immigration increased dramatically. Large numbers of refugees from foreign wars were brought into the country. Tourism recovered. Live attendance at sporting events resumed (violence for entertainment). Public intoxication returned.
Data from the BJS link:
Rate of Violent Victimizations
Aggravated Assault
This is your own graph
The far right of the graph is 2023, and the far left is 1993. What would possibly cause a thinking person to believe crime is higher now than its ever been. In 2018 it was a smidge higher than it is now. And this is from your own source. There is nothing alarming at all about 2023 crime rates compared to the past 30 years.
However, the left has historically been soft on crime, particularly when it comes to illegal immigrants.
Crime statistics clearly show no appreciable difference between administrations ever since the 1990's when the crime rate was much higher. The crime rate has been on a more or less even keel for the past 20 years. There is no difference between the Trump years and the Biden years, all the right wing bullshit aside.
Right and illegal immigration has stabilized over the last couple of decades according to some. Curious that they both seem to be important issues to the current electorate, isn't it?
There is no crime expert in the United States that will tell you crime is worse than ever, except Donald Trump. Maybe he's talking about his own personal crime wave.
And yet a majority of voters say it is a more important issue to them than gun policy, abortion or climate change.
Some do, due to right wing media lies.
Smart sane people know better.
Riiigghht, no doubt the same applies to the "some" that think the economy and immigration are important issues...
No, it's is a graph produced by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The seeded article cites this source. I did not create the graph, so it is not my own graph.
The data shows that crime has increased by significant amounts across the board during Joe Biden's Presidency. I'm not sure what comparing crime rates under Biden with crime rates under Clinton accomplishes. We all know that crime was out of control when Clinton was President; that's where the 'Democrats are soft on crime' talking point came from. Clinton ushered in Broken Windows policing and Three Strikes incarceration, too. Did Clinton's 'tough on crime' policies work? Criminal justice reforms are all about reversing Clinton's 'tough on crime' policies.
The bottom line is Joe Biden has not lowered crime. It's true that Blacks stopped burning cities after Biden was inaugurated. Biden may want to take credit for that decrease in political violence but he really didn't do anything.
Horse shit.
Liberal DA's in democrat-controlled jurisdictions have declined to charge or prosecute criminals for serious and repeat crimes. It's all over the news if one is not blind to the reality of it.