According to the FBI, violent and property crime in the United States fell in 2023, continuing its downward trend following higher crime rates during the pandemic report.
Murders and intentional homicides, so-called non-negligent homicides, have decreased by 11.6% since 2022. Property crimes fell 2.4%.
Overall, FBI data shows violent crime fell 3%.
Violent crime has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential campaign, with former President Donald Trump claiming that crime has “gone through the roof” under the Biden administration.
During the campaign, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, used evidence from another source — the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey — to argue that crime was out of control.
While the FBI’s data only reflects crimes reported to police, the victimization survey is based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and includes both reported and unreported crimes. Respondents are asked whether they reported the crime to the police. However, the survey does not include murder data and only records crimes against people ages 12 and older.
The victimization Opinion pollThe report, released in mid-September, shows violent crime victimization rates increased from 16.4 per 1,000 residents in 2020 to 22.5 per 1,000 in 2023. The report also finds that the 2023 rate is statistically similar to the rate in 2019, when Trump was in office.
Many crime data experts consider both sources to be trustworthy. But authorities track different trends, measure crimes differently and collect data over different periods of time. Unlike the victimization survey, the FBI’s data is largely based on calls for service or police reports. Still, most crimes go unreported, meaning the FBI’s data is neither entirely right nor complete.
The victimization surveys released during the peak years of the pandemic were particularly hard to conduct, which some experts say is a key reason why the FBI and the survey may show different trends.
As a result, these differences, which are often unknown or misunderstood, make it easier for everyone – including politicians – to manipulate results to support their goals.
Political candidates at the national, state and local levels on both sides of the ballot have used crime statistics in their campaigns this year, with some citing promising trends while others using different numbers to flog their opponents. However, it is hard to draw definitive conclusions about crime trends or attribute them to specific policies.
“There is never a single reason why crime trends move one way or the other,” said Ames Grawert, a crime data expert and senior advisor to the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning legal and policy group.
“When presented with an answer that perhaps makes intuitive sense or reflects a particular political belief, it is all too natural to jump straight to that answer. The problem is that crime just doesn’t work that way,” Grawert told Stateline.
At an August rally in Philadelphia, Democratic vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said, said: “There was violent crime under Donald Trump. That doesn’t even count the crimes he committed.”
During Trump’s first three years in office, the violent crime rate per 100,000 people actually fell each year, from 376.5 in 2017 to 370.8 in 2018 and to 364.4 in 2019, according to the FBI.
It wasn’t until 2020 that the rate rose to 386.3, the highest under Trump, when the country saw its largest enhance in murders in a year.
We live in a world full of quotes and people don’t take the time to process information and check facts. The responsibility lies with the voter.
– Alex Piquero, criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics
Walz’s comments overlook the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social unrest following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. And despite the enhance this year, the violent crime rate in Trump’s final year remained slightly lower than last Year of President Barack Obama’s administration. In 2016 the rate was 386.8 per 100,000 inhabitants.
After the FBI’s annual crime report was released last month, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican running for attorney general in North Carolina, said: divided and later deleted a retweet on In fact, FBI data showed that the Los Angeles Police Department reported 325 murders in 2023, while the New Orleans Police Department reported 198.
Voters are worried
Crime has become a top issue in voters’ minds.
A Gallup poll A survey conducted in March found that nearly 80% of Americans are “very much” or “somewhat worried” about crime and violence, putting them above worries like the economy and illegal immigration. In another Gallup poll In a survey overdue last year, 63% of respondents described crime in the U.S. as extreme or very earnest – the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.
Crime data typically lags by at least a year, depending on the agency or organization collecting and analyzing the statistics. But the lack of right, real-time crime data from official sources such as federal or state authorities could leave some voters vulnerable to political manipulation, according to some crime and voter behavior experts.
There are at least three trackers that collect and analyze national and local crime data to fill the gap in real-time reporting. Developed by the Criminal Justice CouncilData consulting company AH Datalytics And NORC at the University of ChicagoThese trackers all show a similar trend of falling crime rates.
“We live in a world full of quotes and people don’t take the time to process information and check facts,” Alex Piquero, a professor of criminology at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said in an interview Stateline. “The responsibility lies with the voter.”
Crime trends and restrictions
In 2020, as shutdowns in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay home, homicides rose nearly 30% — the largest single-year enhance since the FBI began tracking crime.
In 2022, violent crime had returned to near pre-pandemic levels, and FBI data showed a continued decline over the past year. The violent crime rate fell from about 377 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2022 to about 364 per 100,000 in 2023, slightly below the 2019 rate.
The largest cities with populations of at least one million saw the largest drops in violent crime – nearly 7% – while cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 saw a slight enhance of 0.3%.
Rape incidents fell by more than 9% and aggravated assault fell by almost 3%. Burglaries and thefts fell by 8% and 4%, respectively.
However, motor vehicle thefts increased 12% in 2023 compared to 2022, representing the highest rate of car thefts since 2007 at 319 thefts per 100,000 residents.
Although national data suggests an overall keen decline in crime across the country, some crime data experts point out that this is not necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.
“It can be a bit simplistic to look at national trends. You also have to leave room for nuance and context about what’s happening at the local level,” said the Brennan Center’s Grawert.
Some crime experts and politicians criticized the FBI’s latest report, pointing out that not all law enforcement agencies had provided their crime statistics.
The FBI is transitioning participating agencies to a modern reporting system called the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The FBI ordered the transition, which began in the overdue 1980s, to be completed by 2021. This requirement resulted in a significant decrease in agency participation in this year’s report as some law enforcement agencies were unable to meet the deadline.
In 2022, the FBI relaxed the requirement, allowing agencies to operate both the modern and older reporting systems. Since the 2021 mandate, more law enforcement agencies have transitioned to the modern reporting system.
Reporting crime data to the FBI is voluntary, and some agencies may only submit a few months’ worth of data.
Although the FBI’s most recent report covers 94% of the U.S. population, only 73% of all law enforcement agencies using either reporting system participated, according to a Stateline analysis of participation data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. This means that 5,926 agencies, or 27%, did not report data to the FBI.
According to some crime data experts, the majority of missing agencies are likely smaller rural agencies that are not participating due to confined resources and staff.
But participation in the FBI’s crime reporting program has increased steadily over time, particularly after declines in 2021. Many of the law enforcement agencies in the nation’s largest cities submitted data for 2023, and every city department with a population of 1 million or more provided data A full year of data is available, according to the FBI report.
