The FBI recently clarified that crime is actually up, not down, which many knew all along. This formal revision exposes a greater problem with how the FBI collects data.

From Daily Caller. The FBI quietly revised its 2022 data to reflect an increase in crime after initially reporting it had decreased, and experts say that the flawed figures are just the tip of the iceberg.

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It was initially reported that violent crime decreased by 2.1% in 2022, but the Bureau suddenly revised that figure, revealing that violent crime increased by 4.5% instead. Experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the FBI’s metrics are plagued with problems, such as incomplete data collection, confusion about reporting standards, the omission of unreported crime as well as the inherent problems of measuring crime nationally.

Democrats, corporate media outlets and political pundits have routinely cited the FBI’s data to claim that crime has gone down under President Joe Biden, most recently touting newly-released figures for 2023, which show a 3% drop in violent crime that year. However, the sudden reversal in the 2022 data raises more questions about whether a clear picture can be ascertained about crime across the nation. …

The FBI relies on voluntary reporting from police departments across the nation, and every year always leaves out data from a significant portion of agencies, the 2023 data report says. Around 85% of departments and agencies in 2023 participated, leaving out around 3,000 departments and agencies who were enrolled, but did not report. …

“The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program collects and publishes the data voluntarily reported by law enforcement,” a Bureau spokesperson for the UCR Program told the DCNF when asked about the 2023 data. “Because the UCR Program and the National Crime Victimization Survey have different purposes, use different methods, and focus on somewhat different aspects of crime, the complementary information they produce together provides a more comprehensive understanding of the nation’s crime problem than either could produce alone.”

The FBI emphasized to the DCNF that the data relies on voluntary reporting, and that combining the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a nationwide survey that takes into account unreported and reported crime, with the UCR data provides the best picture of nationwide crime.

Sometimes, the difference in the two data sources can paint vastly different pictures of how bad the crime problem is in the U.S. In 2022, there was a massive 45% difference between the NCVS violent crime victimizations figure and FBI’s reported violent crime figure, according to the Marshall Project in 2023.

While the new data shows a .2% drop in robberies nationally, only 42% of robberies were reported to the police, according to the 2023 NCVS survey.

The FBI also sometimes extrapolates crime numbers from existing data … in order to fill in gaps caused by a lack of reporting from departments, Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Fellow Zack Smith told the DCNF. …

Additionally, thinking of crime as something that can be measured on a national level accurately might be flawed, as it is a “hyper local” phenomenon, Smith told the DCNF. …

“Saying crime goes up or crime goes down in the United States is largely meaningless,” [Charles Lehman, fellow at the Manhattan Institute] told the DCNF. “Crime is highly concentrated in cities, and in very small areas of those cities, this is a fundamental criminological insight, and so it’s often much more useful to say what is happening in major cities. And in some major cities, crime is violence is still elevated.”

Though the FBI’s 2023 data shows robberies remaining flat nationally, it’s a different story for cities, which were plagued with the crime that year. Robberies in Chicago soared to a decade-high with 11,933 incidents, while Washington, D.C. clocked in a 67% surge in incidents. …

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(Excerpt from Daily Caller. Photo Credit: South_agency/Getty Images Signature)