Full Measure’s Sharyl Attkisson does a deep dive with Dr. John Lott on issues with the FBI’s crime knowledge. This interview was associated to Dr. Lott’s investigative piece at Actual Clear Investigations titled “Stealth Edit: FBI Quietly Revises Violent Crime Stats.”
After struggling alarming spikes in violent crime, some cities at the moment are reporting higher information. For instance in 2023, Washington, D.C. noticed a 39% enhance in crime and essentially the most murders in 25 years. Now, the capital metropolis is reporting a 35% lower in violent crime for 2024. The previous 4 years have been crammed with debate over the nationwide traits. Some say the federal government has been manipulating numbers. At the moment, we dig into the anatomy of how the reporting of crime stats has modified, and whether or not we’re getting the total fact.
It’s not exhausting to seek out indicators that crime has surged in some American cities. But many in media and politics insisted it’s only a mirage that there’s really much less crime.
In 2023, going into the election 12 months, proof appeared to return within the FBI’s annual crime knowledge.
The statistics confirmed a 2.1% lower in violent crime in 2022 below the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden (Feb. 28, 2024): Final 12 months, the USA had one of many lowest charges of all violent crime, of all violent crimes in additional than 50 years.
To many, the excellent news appeared to fly within the face of the truth on the bottom.
However when Donald Trump raised the difficulty in his debate in opposition to Kamala Harris, a moderator un-skeptically declared the FBI stats to be the ultimate phrase.
Former President Donald Trump (Sept. 10, 2024): Crime right here is up and thru the roof regardless of their fraudulent statements that they made, crime on this nation is thru the roof. And we’ve got a brand new type of crime and it’s known as migrant crime. And it’s taking place at ranges no one thought doable.
David Muir/Debate moderator: President Trump as you already know the FBI says that general is definitely coming down on this nation.
Trump: Excuse me they had been defrauding statements. They didn’t embody the worst cities. They didn’t embody the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud.
Trump might have identified one thing the talk moderator didn’t.
Sharyl: Has there been an enormous shift in what we rely as crimes, and the way the FBI collects its statistics?
John Lott: There was an enormous change.
John Lott is against the law knowledge analyst and was a senior advisor for Analysis and Statistics within the Justice Division, which is over the FBI. He says the FBI crime stats shouldn’t be taken alone at face worth.
Lott: Beginning in 2021, that they had a brand new system for reporting this knowledge to the FBI from police departments across the nation. In 2020, 97% of police departments reported knowledge. In 2022, 31% of police departments didn’t report any crime knowledge to the FBI one other 24% solely partially reported knowledge. So that you had lower than half of police departments in 2022 and 2021 reporting full crime knowledge to the FBI. That’s an enormous sea change.
The place there are gaps in knowledge, Lott says FBI does try and fill within the blanks.
Lott: They attempt to guess. The query is how good of a job they do in guessing. I don’t assume they do an excellent job by way of guessing.
He factors to 2 distinct databases that he says ought to mirror comparable traits however have produced impossibly reverse outcomes: the FBI statistics, and the Nationwide Crime Victimization Survey, which tries to seize further crimes that folks don’t formally report.
Lott: And the explanation why we’ve got this nationwide crime victimization knowledge is we all know most crimes aren’t reported to police. About 40% of violent crimes are reported to police. About 30% of property crimes are reported to police. Earlier than 2020, these numbers tended to go up and down collectively, the reported and the Nationwide Crime Victimization knowledge. Since 2020, they’ve been getting into fully reverse instructions. So for instance, in 2022, whereas the FBI confirmed a 2% drop in violent crime, reported violent crime, the Nationwide Crime Victimization knowledge confirmed a 42% enhance in violent crime. That’s the most important yearly enhance we’ve ever seen in that measure. And that’s going again 50 years.
Different elements that might make the crime charge appear decrease than it’s are: quick staffed police departments with fewer officers to make arrests, and prosecutors not prosecuting some crimes.
Lott: What’s occurred is unreported crime has elevated. Okay? ‘Trigger individuals say, ‘I’m solely gonna report these crimes if I believe the man’s gonna get arrested.’
Sharyl: Primarily based on the numbers you’ve seen. What would you say is the true crime development on this nation, and it might be completely different for violent crimes and nonviolent crimes, however what do you see within the numbers?
Lott: Nicely, I believe it’s gone up tremendously violent crime in the course of the Biden administration. I believe it’s gone up by about 43% since he’s been president. And I believe there are two the reason why the media needs to go and and form of declare that it’s happening. One is simply sadly, I believe in all probability simply to assist the Democrats on this. However I believe the opposite factor, and a variety of Democrats have made this specific is they are saying, “Look, we’ve had many thousands and thousands of illegals coming into the nation and violent crime is falling.” And they also say “it could actually’t be illegals inflicting extra crime as a result of crime is dropping over this time period.”
Which brings us to a different statistical trick, a flood of research indicate unlawful immigrants are extra regulation abiding than U.S. residents.
The Marshall Mission video clip: Our examine discovered that immigrants are much less prone to break the regulation than individuals born within the U.S.
However the research typically group authorized immigrants in with unlawful immigrants.
Lott: Now, what I’ve discovered, I did some work for the county prosecutors in Arizona a couple of years in the past, is on their state jail system, is that you’ve got huge variations between authorized and unlawful immigrants. Authorized immigrants appear to commit crimes at very low charges. Their share of the jail inhabitants was nicely under their share of the state inhabitants. Unlawful immigrants although had a really excessive charge of crime, significantly very violent crime. Every part from kidnappings to murders in comparison with the final inhabitants which might be there. Often what occurs in discussions is that they combine the 2 collectively and so then they’ll get a charge that might be roughly comparable or possibly even barely under what it’s for native born People. And I believe that’s very deceptive to lump these two teams collectively.
In truth, unlawful immigrants have made up a disproportionately excessive variety of jail inmates in America, indicating they commit much more critical crimes.
A decade in the past, when unlawful immigrants made up about one in thirty of the U.S. inhabitants, they accounted for a surprising one in 4 or 5 U.S. jail inmates, based on GAO. That included 4.9 million arrests for 7.5 million offenses together with allegations of greater than one million drug crimes, a half-million assaults, 133,800 intercourse offenses, 24,200 kidnappings, 33,300 homicide-related offenses, and 1,500 terrorism-related crimes. No one has tracked or up to date the numbers since.
Meantime, stark proof of Lott’s claims about crime going up not down below the Biden administration appeared to emerge after that presidential debate
Muir: President Trump as you already know the FBI says that general is definitely coming down on this nation.
Lott found the FBI quietly revised its 2022 figures from a 2.1% drop in violent crime to a 4.5% enhance making a complete rise of 6.6%. That features 80,000 violent crimes that had gone uncounted: 33,000 further robberies, 37,000 additional aggravated assaults, 7,000 extra rapes, and 1,700 added murders.
Sharyl: Have crime statistics at all times been politicized and possibly considerably manipulated?
Lott: I believe it’s gotten loads worse in the previous few years, possibly over the past decade or so. It’s gotten loads worse. I imply, there’s numbers that come out of the Division of Justice now that I simply don’t imagine in any respect.
Sharyl (on-camera): We requested the FBI what accounted for the correction of their violent crime stats for 2022. Did they undercount violent crime? And why FBI traits are reverse The Nationwide Crime Victimization Survey? They didn’t reply these questions however mentioned there shall be growing transparency. And massive cities like New York and LA resumed reporting their crime statistics to the FBI in 2023, when the FBI claims, once more, that violent crime went down.
Full Measure workers, “Crime Stats,” Full Measure, January 12, 2025.
