Trump's new look at crime still shows no exploding number of murders

Last week, the Trump campaign falsely claimed that “the murder rate in American cities is skyrocketing under Kamala Harris.” On Tuesday, the campaign offered a more nuanced and sophisticated critique of the crime data cited by the Democratic presidential candidate. But it still doesn't support the earlier claim, as it doesn't match numbers from multiple sources.

A “memorandum” headlined “Joe Biden's Lies About Crime” (a title that makes one wonder if Trump has forgotten who his opponent is) points out that in 2021 the FBI changed its methods of collecting crime data, moving from the old Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program to the new National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The transition, which was aimed at generating “new and better data,” resulted in a sharp decline in the number of participating law enforcement agencies. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the share of the population covered by participating agencies dropped from the previous norm of about 95 percent to just 65 percent in 2021.

“The FBI website shows that the first quarter 2024 data cited by Joe Biden comes from only 71% of the nation's law enforcement agencies,” the Trump campaign said. “This means crime data is missing from nearly a third of jurisdictions.” The overall NIBRS participation rate, which is relevant for assessing the FBI's final estimates for a given year, is higher: According to the FBI, 15,724 of 18,884 eligible agencies, or 83%, submitted data for 2022. The overall population coverage rate had increased to 85% by 2023. Still, the decline in participation since 2020 is a widely recognized problem.

The Trump campaign points out that “the FBI attempts to 'estimate' crime data for non-reporting agencies by using a 'statistical weighting' of reporting agencies of similar size and type” – a “practice of estimating crime numbers for agencies with missing data” that has been “in use since the 1960s.” Historically, however, the missing data has represented about 5 percent of the population, compared to 15 percent in 2023. A larger gap increases the potential for error.

That's a perfectly reasonable objection. But does that mean that the number of murders is actually “skyrocketing”? No.

Preliminary FBI figures show that the number of murders nationwide fell 26 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. But other sources also report a decline in the murder rate this year, albeit to a lesser extent.

Based on a sample of 277 cities, AH Datalytics reports a 17.3 percent drop in the murder rate this year, which is a lot compared to historical trends. Most of these numbers come from “official” sources, meaning they were reported by local police departments or city governments. Some were compiled by state governments, and some come from local news outlets that track crime.

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), based on data from 39 cities for the first half of 2024, reports that “most violent crimes,” including murder, “are at or below 2019 levels,” the year before a huge spike in the murder rate (which, Trump would have us forget, occurred while he was in office). The CCJ says that through June, the decline in the murder rate was 13 percent in “the 29 cities surveyed that provide data for this crime.”

According to a report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) covering 69 cities over the same period, the total number of murders fell by 17.4 percent. That's strikingly similar to AH Datalytics' estimate, although the latter analysis covers many more cities – including New York, which was not part of the MCCA sample but saw a 10 percent drop in the murder rate, according to AH Datalytics.

Rather than trying to defend its recent claim that “murder numbers are skyrocketing,” the Trump campaign is broadening the focus, arguing that the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which includes crimes that go unreported to police, provides a more accurate picture of what's happening. The NCVS is not relevant for assessing murder trends because it doesn't capture murders—the most serious violent crime and the one that's hardest to miss. And while the Trump campaign's criticism of the FBI numbers focuses on what happened in the first quarter of 2024, we don't yet have NCVS data for 2023, let alone this year.

The NCVS, like the FBI's system, has both strengths and weaknesses. But the Trump campaign considers it “by far the most credible and reliable barometer of crime nationwide.” The NCVS, it says, “shows that between 2020 and 2022 (the latest year for which data is available), there was a 43% increase in violent crime, 58% increase in rape, 89% increase in aggravated assault, and 56% increase in robberies.”

Although these numbers omit the years 2023 and 2024, the Trump campaign would have us believe that they tell the true story of crime during the Biden administration. But the discrepancy between the NCVS and FBI numbers, particularly in 2022, presents a puzzle that cannot be solved simply by determining that the NCVS includes unreported crimes.

In 2002, when the FBI reported a 2 percent drop in violent crime overall, the NCVS results indicated a whopping 75 percent increase. Again, the latter figure does not include murders, which fell 7 percent in 2022, according to the FBI. But they do include rapes reported by respondents, which rose 58 percent, compared to the 6 percent decline estimated by the FBI; robberies, which rose 47 percent, according to the NCVS, but only 1 percent, according to the FBI; and aggravated assault, which more than doubled, according to the survey, but fell 2 percent in the FBI's count.

“The divergence between UCR and NCVS violent crime rates in 2022 can be either too much or too little,” the CCJ notes. “Differing changes in a single year should be considered in the context of the similar long-term trends of the two indicators—and both sources show a noticeable decline in violent crime since the early 1990s.” Still, “changes in UCR and NCVS violent crime rates have rarely differed as much as” in 2022.

The changes in the FBI’s reporting system in 2021 and the associated decline in participation do not seem to be relevant here, as the participation rate has increased significantly higher in 2022 than in 2021. However, if crime victims are increasingly less inclined to contact the police, this could help explain the striking discrepancy between the NCVS results and the FBI numbers in 2022.

According to the NCVS, the CCJ notes, “approximately 52% of serious violent crimes were reported to the police in 2021 and 48% in 2022, a relative decrease of almost 8%. The decline was particularly large for reporting of serious assault, where it fell from 61% in 2021 to 50% in 2022, a decrease of 18%.” But these changes in reporting behavior do not fully explain the huge differences between the NCVS and UCR figures for 2022.

Aside from the difference between reported and unreported crimes, the NCVS and the FBI's system use different methodologies and measure slightly different things. “Because it is a household-based survey,” the CCJ notes, “the NCVS does not include homeless people or people living in institutions such as prisons, detention centers, and nursing homes. It also excludes violent crimes against people under the age of 12. If people included in the survey experienced changes in violence that were different from the changes experienced by people excluded from the survey, this could help explain some of the differences in violence rates.”

The Bureau of Justice Statistics points out other potentially relevant differences between the two sources. For example, “the NCVS contains, but the [FBI system] Excluded are attempted robbery, simple bodily harm, [and] verbal threats of crimes.” The FBI system “includes murder, arson, white collar crimes, and human trafficking, but the NCVS excludes them.” The two sources also use different definitions of some crimes.

Another possible factor: While the FBI's 2022 numbers covered the calendar year, the 2022 NCVS asked about crimes committed from July 1, 2021, to November 30, 2022. “Because the NCVS shows an increase in violent crime,” suggest Weihua Li and Jamiles Lartey of the Marshall Project, “this may be because violent crime rates were higher in the second half of 2021.” They also point out that “historically, the victimization survey is much more volatile from one year to the next,” suggesting that “it may be influenced by statistical noise.”

The Trump campaign has called the FBI's quarterly numbers “garbage” and “fake statistics.” But despite their preliminary nature and the challenges associated with transitioning to the new reporting system, they are largely consistent – if not in magnitude – with what other sources are reporting.

“Currently,” Li and Lartey reported in June, “all sources point to a decline in violent crime.” They quoted University of Miami criminologist Alex Piquero, a consultant to the CCJ Crime Trends Working Group, who said “the FBI's data for the first quarter of 2024 is incomplete but not inaccurate,” adding, “The numbers have not been falsified and the decline is real. The question, of course, is how big that decline will be and how big that decline will be across all types of crime. That's the thing that we just don't quite understand yet.”