A recent FBI report found that violent crimes in 2023 were down about 3% compared to the previous year, while murders and manslaughter were down about 12%.
However, crime data experts told Fox News Digital that these figures aren't an accurate reflection of overall crime as the FBI is working to create a more transparent and detailed reporting system.
The issue of violence data has become a focal point in the 2024 presidential election, with former President Trump claiming during a debate with Vice President Harris that crime was “skyrocketing” under a Biden-Harris administration. Trump's comments were “fact-checked” live on air by ABC News host David Muir, who cited FBI figures to say the opposite was true. Trump fired back sarcastically, calling the FBI statistics a “fraudulent statement.”
The 2023 FBI report also showed that rapes fell by more than 9% and aggravated assaults fell by about 3%. Overall property crimes fell by more than 2%, but motor vehicle thefts increased by nearly 13%.
Who will suffer from police budget cuts? Over 1,000 murders remain unsolved in this blue city.
The issue of the FBI's violence data has become a focal point in the 2024 presidential election after former President Trump claimed the numbers were inaccurate during a debate with Vice President Harris. (Screenshot: Fox News simulcast of the ABC News presidential debate)
Sean Kennedy, a law enforcement and crime data analyst, said the FBI's numbers are “riddled with inaccuracies” as the bureau moves more than 19,000 law enforcement agencies across the country onto the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
Kennedy said NIBRS, which requires multiple data points for every crime, is a more detailed data measurement system than police have traditionally used, and therefore more onerous.
In 2021, the FBI required all law enforcement agencies to submit crime data via NIBRS, but for a variety of reasons, primarily resource strain, about 40% of agencies failed to do so, Kennedy said.
To increase participation, the FBI relaxed NIBRS requirements in 2022, allowing agencies to report through either their traditional system or NIBRS.
According to the FBI, 73% of agencies used NIBRS last year, 12% used the older method, and the rest did not submit data.
The FBI then uses estimates to fill in the gaps, Kennedy said, and if the NIBRS data is also incomplete, the FBI uses other estimation methods to fill in the gaps.
“All estimates are inherently wrong. They're estimates, and the FBI is currently using estimates to get a more accurate number than the raw numbers that are reported,” Kennedy said. “But that doesn't mean the estimates are more wrong or more wrong. It just means they're still wrong.”
He said year-over-year comparisons are also difficult because of differences in how the data is submitted.
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Police investigate the scene of a drive-by shooting in Chicago, Illinois, on July 6, 2024. At least 103 people were shot and 19 were killed in a series of gun violence incidents in the city over the long Fourth of July holiday weekend. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Kennedy said he looked at the data and found dozens of cities where the number of homicides was off by as much as 20% from what the city reported.
For example, the FBI report found that there were 499 murders in Chicago in 2023, but the Chicago Police Department's own figures put the figure at 617.
“That's 118 murders gone,” Kennedy said. “There are errors and data gaps, and you have to assume all of that when you look at the FBI numbers.”
“Because the FBI likely received data for only a portion of the year, the reported crime numbers likely reflect either a misclassification by the FBI, an error on the part of the bureau in inputting the data, or an extended analysis…effectively extrapolating what the rest of the year was like.”
“It appears Chicago didn't provide all its data to the FBI because it couldn't meet its NIBRS burden. The problem is, the burden was too great, so Chicago said, 'we're not going to do it,' and the FBI has to guess,” said Kennedy, executive director of the Coalition for Law, Order and Safety, a nonprofit research group that studies and advocates for effective public safety policy.
“The NIBRS numbers themselves are neither better nor worse. They are nevertheless flawed, and those flaws are of concern.”
When asked for comment on the figures, Chicago Police directed Fox News Digital to a January news release that compiled police crime statistics for 2023, revealing that homicides were down 12.9% compared to 2022.
The FBI said its sole purpose is to provide the public with the most accurate numbers possible, and noted that NIBRS wasn't created by the FBI, but rather is a system driven by local and state law enforcement agencies that want to collect richer data.
The bureau said crime data it received from law enforcement agencies last year covered 94.3% of the population.
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The FBI says it is moving to a more transparent system for reporting crime data. (iStock)
“We have a very robust system in place to capture most of the data we collect, but it's still not 100 percent accurate,” one of the officials said.
Additionally, according to the report, officials said all agencies with at least 1 million employees within their jurisdiction provide the FBI with one year's worth of data.
“So, anyone who claims that we're lacking information on crime trends because of the NIBRS transition and agencies that were unable to make the transition is completely wrong, because we have data provided not only through NIBRS, but also through the summary system that's been around for decades.”
“We're not 100% yet, but we're continuing to have conversations with law enforcement and working with them on the transition to NIBRS.”
Officials said they use an estimation process based on submitted data, taking into account a 5.7% under-coverage of the population, to ascertain crime rates for the entire U.S. population.
“The data reported by 85 percent of institutions has been statistically processed to ensure it is truly nationally representative,” officials said, adding that they were working to make the data available to the public more quickly and on a monthly basis.
A suspected robber stormed into the store. (Manhattan Beach Police Department)
“we “We want to make this information available as quickly and accurately as possible to anyone who needs it for whatever purpose,” the official said. “We have no other goal than to make sure we get the message out to the public about where this crime stands across the country.”
Kennedy said local police departments need to be incentivized and also be penalized for non-compliance.
“These departments are getting federal, local and state grant funding, so we need to provide them with the funds to follow through.”
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Kennedy says NIBRS is a good example of a good idea being imposed from above, without proper consultation or close collaboration with local authorities, and then made mandatory without testing whether compliance was possible.
“And we learned firsthand that that's not the case, which means that the 2021 data is pretty much useless. It's all guesswork, and it's full of errors. So we don't really know how bad 2021 was because of mandatory compliance.”
“But in fairness, everyone involved in this process is doing their best. And the most valuable thing here is the fact that I was able to find that the Chicago numbers don't match up. It's a testament to the increased transparency of crime data. This discussion wouldn't have been possible at the national level 20 years ago, much less 50 years ago, where we'd have to guess. Now we're debating methodologies and data inputs.”
