This week President Biden as soon as once more took a victory lap on crime, trumpeting preliminary FBI information on traits in 2024.
“Communities throughout our nation are safer now than after I took workplace,” he bragged in an official assertion.
But, with crime a central concern on this yr’s election, he and the mainstream media have rigorously ignored proof that the FBI could also be fudging its numbers — very like the way in which the Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the variety of jobs created through the Biden-Harris administration.
Final month, new FBI information confirmed that reported severe violent crime (homicide, rape, theft, and aggravated assault) fell by 3.5% in 2023.
However on the identical time — and far more quietly — the FBI revised its earlier information for 2022, turning a reported lower right into a worrisome improve in violent crime.
Final yr, the media trumpeted the FBI’s declare that reported violent crime had fallen in 2022 by 2.1%.
However now the FBI admits that violent crime rose in 2022 as a substitute, by 4.5% — off by 6.6 share factors.
These up to date numbers resulted in a internet improve in 2022 over 2021 of 80,029 violent crimes: 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults.
It’s a regarding change concerning a extremely politicized subject. A Gallup ballot discovered in March that “crime and violence” was People’ second greatest concern, after inflation.
For a few years now, the mainstream media has been working headlines equivalent to this from NBC Information: “Most individuals suppose the U.S. crime price is rising. They’re improper.”
USA At present’s tackle the 2023 FBI crime information was typical: “Violent crime dropped for second straight yr in 2023, together with homicide and rape.”
But don’t anticipate the media to let individuals know that every one the headlines over the past yr have been improper — or that 2022’s improve was larger than the reported 2023 drop.
Maybe the FBI’s latest numbers received’t be revised upward subsequent yr, after the election has safely handed.
However even when we take them at face worth, it’s vital to tell apart reported crime from complete crime.
We’ve got identified for many years that the majority crimes aren’t reported to the police. That’s why the US Division of Justice offers a measure of complete crime, which incorporates each reported and unreported crime.
And the outcomes of the Division of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 Nationwide Crime Victimization Survey, launched in mid-September, inform a really completely different story.
Since victims don’t report most crimes, the NCVS interviews 240,000 individuals every year about their private experiences.
As an alternative of the FBI’s 3.5% drop in severe violent crime, the NCVS discovered a 4.1% improve in violent crime victimization from 2022 to 2023.
Whereas the FBI claims that severe violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took workplace, the NCVS numbers present that complete violent crime has risen by an unbelievable 55.4%. Rapes have been up by 42%, theft by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% throughout his time period.
The will increase proven by the NCVS through the Biden-Harris administration are by far the most important share will increase over another three-year interval, greater than doubling the earlier report.
If we evaluate 2023 charges with 2019’s pre-COVID violent crime charges, the FBI’s new information present nearly no enchancment — only a 0.2% drop — whereas the NCVS reveals a 19% improve in that point interval.
A lot has been product of the latest decline in homicide charges. However whereas homicide charges fell by 16.2% from 2020 to 2023, they nonetheless exceed pre-COVID ranges by a big 9.6%.
The mainstream media’s therapy of those statistics has been shameful.
Even after the NCVS information was launched and former President Donald Trump mentioned them in a press convention, most retailers solely famous the brand new numbers in “truth checks” that sought to dismiss their significance
The underside line: Trump is appropriate that violent crime has elevated considerably through the Biden-Harris administration.
He has additionally been appropriate to level out that many police departments not report their information to the FBI.
In 2023, 21% of departments together with giant cities like New York and Los Angeles, despatched no crime figures to the FBI. One other 24% of police departments solely partially reported crime information in 2022, the final yr accessible.
The mainstream media refuses to say any information that doesn’t match their narrative.
However People in lots of elements of the nation see the results of rising crime each day, from locked-up merchandise within the native Walgreens to fixed information about assaults within the subway.
We all know that our lives weren’t like this just a few years in the past.
John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Analysis Middle. He served as senior adviser for analysis and statistics within the Workplace of Justice Packages and the Workplace of Authorized Coverage on the Justice Division.
