Despite the claims of some politicians, crime rates are falling • Oklahoma Voice

According to the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report released earlier this month, violent crime in the United States fell significantly in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

FBI data, collected from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies representing about 77% of the country’s population, suggests violent crime is down 15% compared to the first quarter of 2023.

The data, which covers crimes reported from January to March, show a 26.4% decrease in murders, 25.7% in rapes, 17.8% in robberies and 12.5% ​​in aggravated assaults. The number of reported property crimes also decreased by 15.1%.

Still, the widespread public perception that crime is on the rise — a perception reinforced by likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other GOP candidates — could play an important role in the November election. And candidates for state legislatures and governorships from both parties are also likely to use crime statistics on the campaign trail.

In a Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63 percent of respondents described the crime problem in the United States as extremely or very serious, the highest percentage since Gallup first asked the question in 2000.

In May, Trump falsely labeled FBI data showing a drop in crime as “fake numbers.” This month, he falsely claimed that 30 percent of cities, including the “largest and most violent,” were not included in FBI crime statistics.

He may have been referring to the fact that some departments were unable to report data in 2021 because the FBI changed the data reporting system. However, experts say the totals remain valid.

President Joe Biden has also used crime statistics for political purposes. In a May campaign email, Biden said that Trump was “responsible for the largest increase in the murder rate in U.S. history.” While that’s not entirely inaccurate—the country did indeed experience its largest single-year increase in the murder rate in 2020—it ignores the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.

The FBI’s latest crime statistics are consistent with other early data from 2024. In May, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released first-quarter data from a survey of 68 major metropolitan police departments that showed a 17% drop in the murder rate compared to the same period last year.

The FBI’s latest data is preliminary and unaudited, meaning it will change as more law enforcement agencies refine their numbers throughout the year. The national crime data is incomplete because it only includes crimes reported to police, and not every law enforcement agency participates in the FBI’s crime reporting program.

Despite the limitations of the data, some criminologists and crime data experts believe the data is reliable. Some say the FBI data likely exaggerates the declines, suggesting that the decline in violent crime is probably less dramatic but still on a downward trend.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty about the accuracy of the data, so while they’re consistent with trends, they’re probably exaggerating,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm specializing in crime data, said in an interview with Stateline. “In theory, everything gets more accurate as the year goes on.”

Although national data suggest that crime has declined significantly across the country, some criminologists point out that this is not necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“Things are looking good for the nation as a whole, but even with these sharp declines, there are cities across the United States that have probably seen increases that have bucked the trend,” Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, told Stateline.

The average American’s understanding of crime and crime statistics is severely distorted, according to criminologists and crime data experts. This is because media coverage largely focuses on when crimes are committed and political rhetoric is misleading.

Rather than relying on statistics, which can seem impersonal, people tend to cling to anecdotes that resonate more emotionally. Politicians take advantage of that, Dan Gardner, author of “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear,” told Stateline.

“It’s incredibly easy for a political activist to capitalize on fear of crime,” Gardner said.

Telling a tragic story and presenting it in such a way that voters feel that they or their families could become victims of similar crimes if they do not vote for a particular politician is a common and extremely effective tactic, he added.

This use of fear as a motivating factor can drive people to the polls, Gardner said, but it also distorts public perceptions of crime.

“While it’s not a good way to understand the reality of personal safety and society, it’s a very persuasive form of marketing,” Gardner said.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, released a report this month calling on police and the federal government to provide more timely crime data. The report emphasizes that crime data, especially national data, is often delayed by as much as a year, which hampers the public’s understanding of crime trends and limits officials’ ability to make informed policy decisions to proactively address public safety issues.

“We need to accelerate the improvement of our (crime) data,” John Roman, senior fellow and director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at the University of Chicago’s NORC, told Stateline. “Democratizing this data is critical to more effective policy and programming.”