FBI Revises Crime data, Revealing Increase in Violent Crime

An investigation by RealClearInvestigations found that the FBI updated its 2022 crime statistics in September, showing that rather than a 2.1% drop in violent crime as originally reported, the United States actually experienced a 4.5% rise in violent crime. The new dataset showed thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.

Former President Donald Trump has been hit with numerous “fact-checks” on the campaign trail that have cited FBI statistics to maintain violent crime is falling in America.

However, the bureau quietly adjusted its figures for 2022 in recent weeks – and the new numbers show that offenses actually ticked up overall.

The apparent stealth  shows that the raw number of violent crime incidents – including murders, assaults and rapes – including murders, assaults and rapes – rose to 1,256,671 in 2022 from 1,197,930 in 2021, an increase of 4.9%.

In October of 2023, the FBI put out a press release unveiling its national crime data for 2022, which found that “national violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.” Initially, the bureau projected that the violent crime rate relative to the US population had skipped by 2.1% in 2022 compared to 2021.

But the FBI’s adjustment now suggests that the rate of violent crime actually jumped by about 4.5% over the same period.

The upward revision went unmentioned in the bureau’s annual crime figures press release from September of this year, which announced that violent crime decreased by approximately 3% year-over-year in 2023.

The Crime Prevention Research Center first identified the FBI’s subtle fix, citing a spreadsheet breaking down the original data.

College of William and Mary economics professor Carl Moody, who specialises in studying crime, told RealClearInvestigations, “I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022. There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than 1% point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”

In 2021, the bureau appears to have concluded it overcounted violent crime incidents by 55,786 and undercounted them in 2022 by 24,243. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to one analysis, the FBI is missing data from about fifth of key local agencies, while the rate of reporting dipped below 70% in 2021 for the first time in at least 20 years.

In 2021, the FBI moved to a new system of collecting crime data – The National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and retired its Summary Reporting System (SRS).

Beyond the transition trouble, the FBI’s collection data has faced concerns from some experts for being overly reliant on self-reporting of crimes that routinely go unreported.