The Media Say Crime Is Going Down. Don’t Believe It
The decline in reported crimes is a function of less reporting, not less crime.
News outlets claim that Americans mistakenly believe violent crime is rising. A Gallup survey last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% 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%), not better (13%).
Americans aren’t mistaken. News reports fail to take into account that many victims aren’t reporting crimes to the police, especially since the pandemic.
The U.S. has two measures of crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting program counts the number of crimes reported to police every year. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, in its National Crime Victimization Survey, asks about 240,000 people a year whether they have been victims of a crime. The two measures have diverged since 2020: The FBI has been reporting less crime, while more people say they have been victims.
The divergence is due to several reasons. In 2022, 31% of police departments nationwide, including Los Angeles and New York, didn’t report crime data to the FBI. In addition, in cities from Baltimore to Nashville, the FBI is undercounting crimes […]