One of the repeated refrains from the Harris-Walz campaign is that crime is down under the Biden-Harris administration. This isn’t anything new; Democrats have been downplaying crime stats for years. But this year, the candidates and their surrogates have been running around trying to convince Americans that this nation has gotten safer since Biden entered 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
FBI crime data has borne out this narrative in some ways. However, RealClearInvestigations (RCI) has discovered that the bureau stealth-edited its crime stats for 2022, and that change doesn’t look so good for Democrats.
“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%,” John R. Lott Jr. writes at RCI. “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%,” Lott adds. “The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.”
A 6.6% revision isn’t a negligible amount, yet the FBI hasn’t mentioned the change, even though it’s been three weeks since the revision. The bureau’s September 2024 press release doesn’t mention the higher crime numbers, although it harps on “hate crimes” as though they’re the most important issue.
“With the adjustments, there is a net increase of 80,029 more violent crimes, 1,699 more murders, 7,780 more rapes, 33,459 more robberies, and 37,091 more aggravated assaults,” the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) points out. Again, numbers like these are nothing to sneeze at.
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Many people will claim that the crime stats don’t include crimes that aren’t reported, which means that numbers will naturally be lower. But the CPRC demonstrates that the data revisions showed a massive rise in the crimes that do get reported regularly:
A major weakness for reported crime data is that most crimes aren’t reported to the police. Murder has the advantage because the vast majority of murders are reported. But the revised data for 2021 and 2022 shows a net increase of 1,699 more murders. How do you miss 1,699 murders? Another crime category that is well reported is motor vehicle theft because the thefts have to be reported for insurance to cover the theft. But the revised data shows a net increase of 54,216 more motor vehicle thefts.
Lott explains how the FBI relies on “guesswork” to compile its crime data:
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.
Just like those job numbers that the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised downward to the tune of 818,000, the FBI crime stats revision doesn’t reflect well on the Biden administration’s record-keeping. How can we trust anything federal agencies tell us?
“I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022,” Carl Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in studying crime, told RCI. “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.”
As hard as I try not to be cynical, I can’t help but believe that these federal agencies are tweaking their numbers to make the current administration look good in the hope of extending Democrat rule for four or — perish the thought — eight more years. One thing’s for sure: if it’s not malevolence, it’s an alarming level of incompetence.
Take a look at the stats before and after the FBI’s revisions in the charts below:
Table 1 Crime in the United States by Volume and Rate Per 100000 Inhabitants by PJ Media on Scribd
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