AlleyCat
2024-10-17 02:05:56 UTC
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Permalinkcited FBI statistics saying crime has dropped, and Trump responded the numbers are fraudulent.
And a bonus fact check of a fact check ...
ABC moderator David Muir claim: "President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in
this country," the ABC anchor interjected when Trump said "crime is through the roof."
Fact check: Despite Muir's efforts to show up Trump, the former president's response - that the FBI figures are not to
be trusted - was absolutely correct. The Marshall Project, which focuses on law enforcement reporting, found that 6,000
law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI's 2023 analysis. "This means a quarter of the U.S. population wasn't
represented in the federal crime data last year," it said. Moreover, whatever small reductions have happened in cities
such as Chicago is barely a dent in how much crime skyrocketed in past three years.
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From: John Smyth <***@hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 12:53:01 -0400
'FBI Quietly Revises Violent Crime Stats'
<https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4271333/posts>
<https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/10/16/stealth_edit_fbi_quietly_revises_violent_crime_stats_
1065396.html>
'When the FBI originally released the "final" crime data for 2022 in
September 2023, it reported that the nation's violent crime rate fell by
2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point
to counter Donald Trump's claims of soaring crime.
But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that
shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes
thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
The Bureau - which has been at the center of partisan storms - made no
mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release.
RCI discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website
that states: "The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion
in CIUS, 2023." But there is no mention that the numbers increased. One
only sees the change by downloading the FBI's new crime data and
comparing it to the file released last year.
After the FBI released its new crime data in September, a USA Today
headline read: "Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023,
including murder and rape."
It's been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The
Bureau's lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant
change concerns researchers.
"I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022," Carl
Moody, a professor at the College of William and Mary who specializes in
studying crime, told RealClearInvestigations. "There were no revisions
from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of
less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022,
especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI
data."
"It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they haven't
explained these large changes," Dr. Thomas Marvell, the president of
Justec Research, a criminal justice statistical research organization,
told RCI.
The FBI did not respond to RCI's repeated requests for comment.
Extensive Revisions in Violent Crime Stats
The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022
report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There
were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and
37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the
FBI's 2023 numbers be believed?
RCI
FBI Revised Crime Rates
RCI
Without the increase, the drop in violent crime in 2023 would have been
less than half as large - only 1.6% instead of the reported drop of
3.5%.
The FBI isn't the only government agency that has been revising its
data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the number
of jobs created during the year that ended in March by 818,000 people.
The FBI's crime stats revisions reveal how much guesswork is involved in
even the "final" numbers often seized on by politicians. The FBI doesn't
simply count reported crimes. Instead, it offers estimates by
extrapolating data from police departments that report only partial-year
data. The Bureau also makes estimates for cities that report no data.
The FBI's method of generating these estimates changes over time, and it
affects the figures they report.
"The processes, such as how it tries to 'estimate' unreported
figures, has long been a black box, even to the Bureau of Justice
Statistics - the Department of Justice's actual statistical agency,"
says Jeffrey Anderson, who headed the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics
from 2017 to 2021.
Anderson said when he headed the Bureau of Justice Statistics, "We
definitely would have highlighted in a press release or a report the
6.6% change recorded for 2022, which moved the numbers from a drop to a
rise in violent crime."
Many Crimes Are Unreported
Another problem with FBI crime data is its reliance on reported crimes.
Most crimes go unreported, with only about 45% of violent crimes and 30%
of property crimes brought to the police's attention, according to the
National Crime Victimization Survey. Since the FBI only tracks reported
incidents and this gap is so large, researchers argue that when the
media discusses crime rates based on FBI data, they should clarify that
it reflects "reported" crime, not give the impression that total crime
is changing.
Nonreporting of crime doesn't affect all crimes equally. Nonreporting of
murder and motor vehicle theft is relatively rare. In murder cases,
victims can't be overlooked, and for auto theft, insurance claims
require police reports. However, it's difficult to fully trust even
these numbers because the FBI underreported 1,699 murders and 54,216
motor vehicle thefts in 2022, casting doubt on the reliability of the
data.
Although recent attention has focused on the decline in murder rates,
even with the revised numbers, the 16.2% drop from 2020 to 2023 still
leaves murder rates 9.6% higher than pre-COVID levels.
A half-century ago, the DOJ provided a total crime measure, including
both reported and unreported crime. The results of the department's
Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey,
released in mid-September, tell a very different story from the FBI
data.
The NCVS interviews 240,000 people each year about their personal
experiences.
Instead of the FBI's 3.5% drop in the reported violent crime rate in
2023, the NCVS found a 4.1% increase in the reported violent crime rate.
Even with the revised FBI numbers, in 2022, the FBI's 4.5% increase
pales in comparison to the NCVS's 29.1% increase.
RCI
FBI - Change in Reported Crime Rates
RCI
Over the past few years, the number of police officers has declined
because of cuts in budgets and many retirements. One result is that
police departments nationwide - from Charlottesville and Henrico
County, Va., to Chicago, Ill. and Olympia, Wash. - are no longer
responding to calls unless the perpetrator is still there actively
committing the crime. Instead of police coming out to investigate and
take a report, residents in those jurisdictions can still go to the
police station and wait in line to get a police report filled out. In
addition, despite the widespread belief that calling 911 is enough to
report a crime, the FBI officially doesn't tally 911 calls. It only
counts crimes when police make out an official report.
Other Data Show Sharper Rises in Crime
While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since
Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has
risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated
assault by 55% during Biden's term. Since the NCVS started, the largest
previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase
under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.
The increases shown by the NCVS during the Biden-Harris administration
are by far the largest percentage increases over any three years,
slightly more than doubling the previous record.
Comparing 2023 rates with 2019 pre-COVID violent crime rates, the FBI's
new 2023 data show virtually no improvement - just a 0.2% drop - while
the NCVS shows a 19% increase over that period. But the news media
didn't cover the crime survey when it was released last month.
"With the media using the 2022 FBI data to tell us for a year that crime
was falling, it is disappointing that there are no news articles
correcting that misimpression," Moody told RCI. "We will have to see
whether the FBI later also revises the 2023 numbers."
At the beginning of this year, the media was running headlines like
National Public Radio's: "Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. -
even if Americans don't believe it." "At some point in 2022 ... there was
just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just
continued to fall," NPR claimed. But now the FBI has itself admitted its
violent crime numbers were way off.
Even as polls show that Americans are concerned about crime, the FBI and
the media are making it difficult to see how crime rates have changed
over the last few years. A Gallup survey late last year found that 92%
of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A
February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a 4.7-to-1 margin,
likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse (61%), not
better (13%). A Gallup poll found in March that "crime and violence" was
Americans' second biggest concern, after inflation. But the media and
politicians used the inaccurate FBI data to try to convince people that
they were wrong.
"This FBI report is stunning because it now doesn't state that violent
crime in 2022 was much higher than it had previously reported, nor does
it explain why the new rate is so much higher, and it issued no press
release about this large revision," said David Mustard, the Josiah Meigs
Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia who researches
extensively on crime. "This lack of transparency harms the FBI's
credibility.'