the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, The FBI’s recent fourth-quarter crime report for 2023 paints a picture of a country seeing significant drops in violent crime and murder. According to the agency, murder is down 13.2%, and violent crime has fallen 5.7% compared to 2022. News outlets have eagerly reported this as a major success, with headlines proclaiming that violent crime has “declined significantly” and is approaching pre-pandemic levels.
But beneath these promising figures lies a troubling reality—these numbers may be unreliable at best, and outright deceptive at worst. A closer look at how crime data is collected and reported reveals significant flaws that cast doubt on the accuracy of the FBI’s latest figures. In fact, violent crime is still substantially higher than in 2019, and last year’s apparent drop is far less meaningful than it appears.
The Shift to a New Reporting System
Part of the problem stems from the way police departments report crime data to the FBI. In 2021, the FBI required all law enforcement agencies to transition from a longstanding system to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). While NIBRS offers more detailed crime data, it also places a heavy burden on already overstretched police departments. As a result, many large cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City have struggled to comply, leading to gaps in reporting.
In 2019, about 89% of police agencies submitted their crime data to the FBI, covering 97% of the U.S. population. However, by 2021, only 63% of departments, representing just 65% of the population, were submitting data. To increase participation, the FBI allowed agencies to use the old system again in 2022, but many cities still struggled with compliance. Some, like St. Louis, submitted incomplete or inaccurate data, while others relied on estimates and guesswork to fill in the gaps.
Inconsistent Data and Overestimation
The FBI’s reliance on estimates to compensate for missing data has led to inconsistencies. For instance, Baltimore reported 262 murders in 2023, but the FBI’s data shows only 225—a discrepancy of 37 homicides. In Milwaukee, the police department reported a 7% increase in robberies, while the FBI showed a 13% decline. Nashville reported more than 6,900 aggravated assaults, but the FBI counted only 5,941, leaving nearly 1,000 incidents unaccounted for.
These discrepancies suggest that the FBI’s year-to-year comparisons overstate the decline in crime, especially in major cities where violent crime remains elevated. While the FBI reported a 12.8% drop in homicides across 40 major cities in 2023, the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA)—which tracks data from the largest police departments—reported only a 10.2% decline. Similarly, while the FBI claimed a 6.6% drop in violent crime, the MCCA recorded only a 4.5% decrease.
Underreporting and Police Misclassification
Another factor that undermines the reliability of the FBI’s crime data is underreporting—both by victims and by law enforcement agencies themselves. A growing number of victims are not reporting crimes to the police. In 2022, only 42% of violent crime victims and 33% of property crime victims filed reports. This means the FBI’s crime statistics are based on a fraction of the actual offenses occurring nationwide.
Moreover, some police departments have been found to underreport crimes, either by misclassifying serious offenses or by discouraging victims from filing reports. Between 2005 and 2012, an investigation found that the Los Angeles Police Department had reclassified thousands of violent assaults as lesser offenses, artificially reducing the city’s crime rate by 7%.
The Reality: Crime Is Still Elevated
While the FBI’s data suggests crime is declining, other sources show a more troubling reality. Violent crime remains significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. According to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), murder is up 18% across 32 major cities since 2019, while the MCCA reports a 23% increase across 70 cities. Aggravated assaults have also risen, with the CCJ’s 25-city sample showing an 8% increase since 2019, while the MCCA reports a 26% rise in aggravated assaults.
A Misleading Narrative
In short, while the FBI’s data might suggest that crime is falling, the truth is more complicated. Crime may have dropped slightly from its 2022 peak, but it remains much higher than before the pandemic. To claim that crime is significantly down is like standing on a bluff and saying you are closer to the ground—technically true, but misleading.
The FBI’s data, while useful, is far from a perfect measure of crime in the U.S. With ongoing issues in data reporting, estimation, and underreporting, the true picture of crime remains murky. Communities and policymakers should be cautious before celebrating any perceived victory in the fight against crime based on these numbers.
Politics has infected many of our institutions, and now we can’t even trust our crime stats, or our judicial system.
It’s all bullshit. Crime is going up. Talk to any police officer and they will tell you it’s nonstop even an hour locally areas look at our suburban towns. It was always quiet anymore. There’s so much shit going on.
F … I … B …
When you don’t like the facts you make up your own narrative.
Can’t you just be happy?