FBI Stealth Edits Crime Stats, Shows Violent Crime Went Up in 2022
Oh, look. Three weeks before the election, the FBI quietly edited its crime data.
The Democrats, media, and the left latched onto the FBI’s first report that said violent crime fell in 2022 by 2.1%.
They all used the stat against former President Donald Trump, who has repeated that crimes have increased.
RealClear Investigations discovered the stealth edit: “violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%.”
Those crimes include “thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.”
Oops:
RCI discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website that states: “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.” But there is no mention that the numbers increased. One only sees the change by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year.After the FBI released its new crime data in September, a USA Today headline read: “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.”It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers.
Carl Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in studying crime, reviewed the data from 2004 to 2022: “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”
HOW do you miss so many of these crimes? Ridiculous:
The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?
How do you miss so many murders and motor vehicle thefts? Both of those are likely reported.
Murder is reported for obvious reasons. But people report motor vehicle thefts for insurance purposes.
Don’t forget that the statistics only include reported crimes.
Many crimes go unreported. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) said people only bring “about 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes” to the police.
Speaking of NCVS, its data also sparks doubt in the FBI data:
A half-century ago, the DOJ provided a total crime measure, including both reported and unreported crime. The results of the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, released in mid-September, tell a very different story from the FBI data.The NCVS interviews 240,000 people each year about their personal experiences.Instead of the FBI’s 3.5% drop in the reported violent crime rate in 2023, the NCVS found a 4.1% increase in the reported violent crime rate. Even with the revised FBI numbers, in 2022, the FBI’s 4.5% increase pales in comparison to the NCVS’s 29.1% increase.
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