President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris insist crime rates are dropping.
Their problem is that people have doubts. Survey after survey show that Americans think the country is less safe now than it was a year ago or five years ago when President Trump was in office.
Media fact-checkers have rushed to referee the issue and insist that the president and vice president are correct about a decrease in crime.
The reality is far more complicated.
Analysts examine two big datasets. One, held by the FBI, collects crimes reported by police departments nationwide. That measure shows a drop in overall crime rates from a peak during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The other set is held by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which conducts a massive annual poll asking roughly 240,000 Americans whether they were affected by crime. The National Crime Victimization Survey says crime was rising under Mr. Biden.
“The question is: Do you want to look at only crimes reported to police, or do you want to look at total crimes, reported and unreported?” said John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
For Mr. Lott, the answer is clear. He says the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows a more accurate trend.
“We have two different sources, and I think people who know the issue would say the BJS is kind of the gold standard for doing this stuff,” he said.
The most recent victimization data, released last September, covered 2022. It showed 23.5 people per 1,000 said they were victims of violent crime, up from 16.5 per 1,000 the previous year. Property crimes such as burglary or motor vehicle theft also rose.
The FBI’s latest full-year report, released in October, also covered 2022. It found a 6.1% decrease in homicide, a 5.4% decrease in rape and a 1.1% dip in aggravated assault. Robberies ticked up 1.3%.
More recent quarterly data from the FBI shows continued declines in reported crimes in 2023 and early 2024. The numbers match those of other groups that rely on police reports, such as last week’s data from the police chiefs of roughly 70 large jurisdictions. The chiefs said homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault reports fell from 2023 to early 2024.
Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris celebrated the police chiefs’ numbers.
“Americans are safer today than when Vice President Harris and I took office,” Mr. Biden said.
Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said: “Crime is down. Border crossings are down. Donald Trump’s angry rants do not change the facts or the results. Under Trump, America was less safe, and we saw unprecedented violence, chaos and division.”
Media fact-checkers generally side with Mr. Biden.
He claimed earlier this year that crime was “near a record 50-year low,” and PolitiFact, using the FBI data as support, rated that as true. The outfit briefly acknowledged the crime victimization survey and glossed over data showing an increase in 2022 by saying the rates are still “far lower” than in the 1990s.
Stateline declared last month that “crime rates are decreasing.”
CNN, also citing FBI and other police-based data, said it is “clear crime has indeed declined to some extent.”
Mr. Lott said refereeing crime trends used to be easier because FBI crime reports and Bureau of Justice Statistics victimization surveys generally agreed. If one went up, the other did too.
Now that they are diverging, Mr. Lott said, he suspects the victimization survey is correct and the report-based approach is missing crimes.
Average arrest rates in large cities have fallen dramatically. In the years before the pandemic, 44% of violent crime reports ended with arrests. That fell to 20% in 2022, Mr. Lott said.
“It’s no surprise you’re going to have a big increase in crime rate when you have a plummeting of arrests,” he said. “We’ve known for a long time whether or not people report crimes to the police is related to whether people think something is going to happen — that people are going to get caught and punished.”
Mr. Lott said police may not record all the crimes that people think they have reported. In recent years, some departments have told 911 callers to dial their non-emergency line if no one is in immediate danger. Callers may not follow up but would tell the victimization survey they reported a crime.
One exception is homicide, which is almost always reported. The victimization survey can’t capture such crimes.
The FBI data indicates a drop in homicides.
The Brennan Center, a left-leaning think tank, says the best place to look for crime trends is local police reporting, which can give a sense of national trends. That approach shows that violent crime is dropping, the center said.
The Pew Research Center acknowledged in an analysis of crime trends in April the growing public worries over crime but noted a serious partisan divide. Republicans are significantly more likely to believe crime rates have worsened.
Pew was careful to conclude that the victimization survey and the FBI data “paint an incomplete picture.” Overall, it said, crime is down significantly from the 1990s.
Richard Berk, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the police-based data and crime victimization data have different measurements, each with its own set of flaws.
He said the national debate over crime rates doesn’t capture much of the reality about significant regional differences in the extent and types of crimes.
“In Philly, where I live, we have had one homicide in the past several years. Within perhaps a mile of where I live, there are neighborhoods that can have several homicides over a single weekend,” he said.
“All the talk about crime at a national level is statistical nonsense that is nothing more than a political football. And it is a football in a political game over which national-level policy can have little to no real effect,” he said.
Mr. Berk said voters should look at their local crime rates, particularly for homicides or shootings, where reporting is the most accurate. He said trends over several years show a better picture than year-to-year differences that rarely answer big questions the politicians are raising.
The politicians are talking, and for now, voters seem to buy Mr. Trump’s argument more than Mr. Biden’s.
Polling has consistently shown concerns about crime, with Americans saying they want lawmakers to do something about it.
Mr. Lott said they observe everyday interactions. For example, when people walk into a drugstore in a major city, they may suddenly be confronted with security gates at the doors and wares behind locked glass. Mr. Lott said the companies aren’t installing glass cases because of perceptions but because of loss figures.
“People see that. They know that’s new,” he said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.