When the FBI actually released the “final” crime statistics for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the world’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1 percentage. This immediately became, and remains, a Democrat Party talking level to store Donald Trump’s claims of soaring violence.
But the FBI has slowly revised those figures, releasing new data that shows violent violence increased in 2022 by 4.5 percent. The new information includes dozens more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated attack.
The Bureau, which has been the subject of political furore, did not mention these adjustments in its press release from September 2024.  ,
RCI discovered the change through a mysterious guide on the FBI site that , says:” The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for participation in CIUS, 2023″. However, there is no mention of how the amounts increased. Only the change can be seen when one downloads the FBI’s innovative crime data and compares it to the version that was made public last year.
After the FBI released its innovative crime statistics in September, a USA Today headline , read:” Violent crime dropped for second straight month in 2023, including death and murder” . ,
More than three weeks have passed since the FBI released the updated information. Experts are concerned about the Bureau’s absence of affirmation or argument regarding the significant shift.
” I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022″, Carl Moody, a teacher at the College of William and Mary who specializes in studying violence, told RealClearInvestigations. ” There were no adjustments from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were little changes of less than one percent place. The big changes in 2021 and 2022, particularly without an argument, make it difficult to believe the FBI data”.
” It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they have n’t explained these large changes”, Dr. Thomas Marvell, the president of Justec Research, a criminal justice statistical research organization, told RCI.
The FBI did not respond to RCI’s repeated requests for comment.
substantial revisions to the violent crime statistics
The real changes in atrocities are extensive. According to the most recent information for 2022, violent crimes were committed in 80, 029 more cases than in 2021. There were an extra 1, 699 deaths, 7, 780 assaults, 33, 459 thefts, and 37, 091 aggravated assaults. The question inevitably arises: If the FBI’s 2023 figures be believed?
Without the raise, the drop in violent crime in 2023 would have been less than half as large — just 1.6 percentage instead of the reported decline of 3.5 percent.
Not just the FBI, which has been updating its information, is the other federal agency. The Bureau of Labor Statistics , tremendously overestimated , the number of work created during the year that ended in March by 818, 000 individuals.
How much speculation goes into even the “final” amounts that the FBI’s crime statistics revisions reveal. The FBI does n’t simply count reported crimes. Instead, it provides projections using extrapolated information from police departments, which merely release partial-year data. Additionally, the Bureau compiles estimates for cities that do n’t release any data. Over time, the FBI’s method of producing these projections alterations, which has an impact on the figures that are reported.
” The]FBI’s ] processes, such as how it tries to ‘ estimate’ unreported figures, has long been a black box, even to the Bureau of Justice Statistics — the Department of Justice’s actual statistical agency” , , says , Jeffrey Anderson, who headed the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2017 to 2021.  ,
We certainly would have highlighted the 6.6 % shift recorded for 2022, which changed the numbers from a decline to a surge in violent crime, Anderson said when he was in charge of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Some Acts Are Unreported
Another issue with FBI crime statistics is the emphasis on crimes that have already been reported. Most crimes come undetected, with only about 45 percent of violent crimes and 30 percent of property crimes brought to the officer’s interest, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Researchers contend that when the media discuss murder rates based on FBI data, they should understand that it reflects “reported” crime and never give the impression that overall violence is changing because the FBI simply tracks reported incidents and this difference is so huge.
Nonreporting of crime does n’t affect all crimes equally. It’s fairly uncommon to not report death and motor vehicle theft. In murder cases, victims ca n’t be overlooked, and for auto theft, insurance claims require police reports. Because the FBI reported 1, 699 deaths and 54, 216 incidents of cars in 2022, which casts doubt on the accuracy of the data, it’s still difficult to fully trust yet these figures.
Although current attention has focused on the decrease in crime rates, even with the updated numbers, the 16.2 pct fall from 2020 to 2023 also leaves death rates 9.6 percent higher than pre-Covid levels.  ,
A half-century before, the DOJ provided a full crime estimate, including both reported and unreported violence. The benefits of the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics , 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, released in mid-September, show a very unique history from the FBI information.  ,
The NCVS conversations 240, 000 people each year about their personal experience.
Instead of the FBI’s 3.5 percent decline in the reported violent crime rate in 2023, the NCVS found a , 4.1 percent increase , in the reported violent crime rate. Even with the updated FBI figures, in 2022, the FBI’s 4.5 percent improve pales in comparison to the NCVS’s 29.1 cent raise.
Due to budget cuts and numerous pensions, the number of police officers has decreased over the past few years. One consequence is that police agencies global — from , Charlottesville , and , Henrico County, Virginia, to , Chicago, Illinois,  , and , Olympia, Washington , — are no longer responding to calls unless the offender is still there deliberately committing the crime. People in those areas can still go to the police station and wait in line to have a police statement filled out in place of officers coming out to research and get a report. In addition, despite the widespread belief that calling 911 is enough to report a crime, the FBI officially does n’t tally 911 calls. When police produce an official document, it merely counts crimes.
Another Research Findings Show Sharper Rises in Violence
While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8 percentage since Biden took office, the NCVS statistics show that overall violent crime has  , risen by 55.4 percent. Murders are up by 42 percentage, assault by 63 percent, and aggravated rape by 55 pct during Biden’s term. Since NCVS was founded, the largest previous raise over the course of three times was 27 % in 2006, but the boost under Biden was somewhat more than twice as large.
The NCVS’s increases during the Biden-Harris management are by far the largest percentage increases in any three times, significantly more than the previous record’s double.
Comparing 2023 rates , with 2019 pre-Covid violent murder rates, the FBI’s fresh 2023 data shows almost no development — only a 0.2 percent fall— while the NCVS shows a 19 percent increase over that period. The crime survey was released last month, but the news media did n’t cover it.
It is disappointing that there are n’t any news articles correlating that false impression because the media has been using the 2022 FBI data to tell us for a year that crime is declining, Moody told RCI. ” We will have to see whether the FBI later also revises the 2023 numbers”.
At the beginning of this year, the media were running headlines , like National Public Radio’s:” Violent crime is dropping fast in the U. S.— even if Americans do n’t believe it”. According to NPR,” there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall” at some point in 2022. However, the FBI has now acknowledged that its numbers for violent crime were in error.
The FBI and the media are making it difficult to see how crime rates have changed over the past few years despite polls showing that Americans are concerned about crime. A , Gallup survey , late , last year found that 92 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a , 4.7-to-1 margin, likely voters say violent crime in the U. S. is getting worse (61 percent ), not better ( 13 percent ). A Gallup poll , found , in March that ,” crime and violence” was Americans ‘ , second biggest concern, after inflation. However, the media and politicians used the untrue information from the FBI to try to persuade the public that they were mistaken.
” This , FBI report , is stunning because it now does n’t state that violent crime in 2022 was much higher than it had previously reported, nor does it explain why the new rate is so much higher, and it issued no press release about this large revision”, said David Mustard, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia who researches extensively on crime. ” This lack of transparency harms the FBI’s credibility”.
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations.