Violent crime in the United States dropped significantly in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to the FBI’s quarterly uniform crime report released earlier this month.
FBI data, collected from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies representing about 77% of the nation’s population, shows violent crime is down 15% compared to the first quarter of 2023.
The data, which covers reported crimes from January to March, shows a 26.4% drop in murders, a 25.7% drop in rapes, a 17.8% drop in robberies and a 12.5% drop in aggravated assaults. Reported property crimes also dropped by 15.1%.
Still, the widespread public perception that crime is rising — a perception reinforced by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other GOP candidates — could play a major role in the November election. And legislative and gubernatorial candidates from both parties are also likely to cite crime statistics at the rally.
IN Questionnaire tardy last year, 63% of respondents described the crime problem in the U.S. as extremely or very earnest. That’s the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.
In May, Trump was wrong called FBI data shows decline in ‘false number’ crimes this month taken over that FBI crime statistics do not cover 30% of cities, including the “largest and most violent.”
He may have been referring to the fact that some departments were unable to report data in 2021 because the FBI changed its data reporting system, but experts say the overall numbers remain exact.
President Joe Biden has also used crime statistics for political purposes. In a May campaign email, Biden he said that Trump “has overseen the largest murder spike in U.S. history.” While that’s not entirely untrue — the country did see its largest single-year enhance in murders in 2020 — it ignores the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
The latest FBI crime statistics match other early data from 2024. In May, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released data from the first quarter The study, conducted across 68 major city police departments, found that murders were down 17% compared to the same period last year.
The latest FBI 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 includes only crimes reported to police, and not every law enforcement agency participates in the FBI’s crime reporting program.
Despite the data limitations, some criminologists and crime data experts say the data is credible. Some say the FBI data likely overestimates the declines, suggesting that the decline in violent crime is likely less dramatic but still trending downward.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty about the accuracy of the data, so it fits, but it’s probably overstating trends,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a consulting firm specializing in crime data, told Stateline. “Theoretically, everything will get more accurate as the year goes on.”
While national data shows a significant drop in crime across the country, some criminologists warn that this does not necessarily apply to individual cities and neighborhoods.
“It looks good for the country as a whole, but even with these large reductions, there are cities in the United States that have probably seen increases that go against the trend,” Charis Kubrin, a professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California, Irvine, told Stateline.
According to criminologists and crime data experts, the average American has severely distorted views of crime and crime statistics due to media reporting that focuses primarily on when crimes occur and misleading political rhetoric.
Rather than rely on statistics, which can seem impersonal, people tend to stick to anecdotes that evoke more emotion. Politicians are taking advantage of that, Dan Gardner, author of “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear,” told Stateline.
“If you’re a political activist, it’s incredibly easy to exploit fear of crime,” Gardner said.
He added that a common and extremely effective tactic is to tell a tragic story and present 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.
Gardner argues that using fear as a motivator may get people to vote, but it also distorts public perceptions of crime.
“It’s a poor way to understand the reality of personal and societal safety, but it’s a very persuasive form of marketing,” Gardner said.
The Criminal Justice Council, an independent think tank, published report this month calling on police and the federal government to provide more timely crime data. The report highlights that crime data, especially national data, often lags by up to a year, making it hard for the public to understand crime trends and limiting officials’ ability to make informed policy decisions to proactively address public safety issues.
“We need to accelerate improvements in our [crime] data,” John Roman, senior researcher and director of the Center for Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Stateline. Roman also chairs the Criminal Justice Council’s Crime Trends Working Group. “Democratizing that data is really critical to more effective policy and programming.”
