Is Crime Going Down, Or Have Democrat-Run Cities Just Given Up On Reporting It?

Even though gangs are increasingly targeting gun-toting, carjacking, and mugging people in major cities, 100,000 Americans die from fentanyl poisoning every year. Mass murders happen with alarming regularity. Unfortunately, partisanship can have a significant impact on perceptions of crime. Gallup research Republicans perceive crime more as a problem when a Democrat is President, and vice versa when a Republican is elected to the White House. 

Public safety is a national topic that is plagued by conflicting narratives and inadequate information. It is difficult to find a political consensus about what should be done. Even as Gallup’s polling This belief is evident in “crime is increasing locally is now at the highest point,” It notes: “In absolute terms, Americans have for decades exhibited a marked tendency to say that crime is increasing rather than decreasing, year in and year out.”

It’s difficult enough that public perception of crime is often untethered from reality, it’s even worse when the government agencies that are supposed to report, gather, and analyze crime are failing at an alarming rate. 

Nonprofit that advocates left-leaning criminal law The Marshall Project, in commenting on the FBI’s annual release of crime statistics last November, noted, “The nation’s most thorough crime data collection program concluded it’s possible crime went up, went down or stayed the same.” Why is there so much uncertainty? It “largely stems from the fact that 2021’s data was more incomplete than any in recent memory. … This year about 7,000 police agencies, covering about 35% of the U.S. population were missing.” The Justice Department just made an estimate in order to fix the large gaps in the data from large metropolitan areas like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco. 

“In some cases,” Marshall noted: “the FBI didn’t even have enough information to make an estimation.”

What is the significance of so many missing arrest data files? There are two reasons. First, the FBI finally switched over fully to a new system of reporting, the National Incident-Based Reporting System. The FBI had been accepting data in a format that was nearly 100 years old, and 2021 was the first year the reports from police departments — entirely voluntary — had to be in the new format. But there’s another disturbing reason some police departments don’t report data: It could make them or the left-wing politicians overseeing them look bad. 

The FBI didn’t publish state-level violent crime statistics for California, Florida and Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland. New Jersey, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico. Additionally, West Region had no estimate of violent crimes and murders. Thus, when some, mostly on the left, argue that crime is going down, it’s a highly suspect claim. 

I asked Julie WarrenMy Texas Public Policy Foundation colleague, who serves as the deputy director. Right on the Crime Initiative, concerning persistent non-reporting by police departments of crime data. She suggested that a non reporting department such as the San Francisco Police Department might be discouraged from reporting arrests, because the district attorney does not want to.

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