Crime is a major issue in this year's election, yet the mainstream media has ignored the release of a major new government report showing a sharp rise in violent crime — a record increase under the Biden administration.
Latest Data release The Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey found a sharp increase in violent crime under the Biden-Harris administration compared to when President Donald Trump left office.
Despite much publicity about the decline in murder rates over the past few years, Americans feel violent crime is on the rise.
During the ABC News presidential debate earlier this month, David Muir attention“Mr. President, as you know, the FBI has reported that overall violent crime in the country is decreasing,” but Muir would have been much more accurate to say that crime is on a downward trend. Reported Calls to police have gone down, but that's not the same as total crime. Muir could also have acknowledged that, as Trump pointed out in his response, fewer than half of police departments reported complete data to the FBI in 2022.
The NCVS was established more than 50 years ago to measure crime overall because victims don't report most crimes. The survey interviews 240,000 people each year.
The total number of serious violent crimes (rape, robbery and aggravated assault), a category that corresponds to the FBI's violent crime index, has skyrocketed since 2020. Total violent crimes in 2023 are up 55.4% since the Biden-Harris administration took office. Rape is up 42%, robbery is up 63% and aggravated assault is up 55%.
The increase under the Biden-Harris administration is by far the largest increase in any three-year period to date and is more than double the previous record.
Days have passed and the media has not mentioned these significant increases.
Associated Press Ran Following President Trump's press conference in California on September 13th, the acting director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics said that while the violent victimization rate in 2023 was higher than in 2020 and 2021, it is not statistically different from the pre-COVID rate in 2019, when Trump was president.
The AP did not say whether the rate is statistically different from 2020 or 2021, nor did it say how large the increase is. Trump's claim is that violent crime has increased under a Biden-Harris administration. The 2022 rate is Statistically significant This is higher than the previous two years. Violent crime rates for 2022 and 2023 are also significantly higher.
Total violent crimes increased by 19% from 2019 to 2023, the only other time there has been a larger increase over a four-year period.
In many parts of the country, we see products in CVS and Walgreens stores placed behind plexiglass, and customers must call a store employee to unlock the glass and wait while they read and examine the various packages. Americans know that things weren't like this just a few years ago.
Despite much publicity about the decline in murder rates over the past few years, Americans feel violent crime is on the rise.
Murders are almost always reported, making the data relatively reliable. The FBI reported that the murder rate fell 13% in 2023, but remains 5% higher than in 2019.
The NCVS doesn't track homicide rates, but data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contradicts the FBI numbers: The FBI reports that homicide rates peaked in 2020 and declined in 2021 and 2022, but CDC data shows that homicide rates were actually higher in 2022 than in 2020 (2022 is the most recent year for which CDC data is available).
The media is trying to protect Democrats from bad news about crime, which is key to many Democratic arguments. Democrats have argued that because crime is going down, an influx of illegal immigrants cannot cause crime. [Republican National Convention] it is [illegal immigration] It's leading to increased crime,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. Claimed On Fox News Sunday.
The news media won't report shocking numbers because they know that spreading information that rape, robbery and aggravated assault rates are 55% higher than in 2020 and well above pre-COVID levels will spark Democratic rhetoric.
Editor's note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and published via RealClearWire.
