I think this is a trick question.
Americans can be forgiven for suffering from whiplash regarding law and order.
In recent weeks the Biden administration and many news outlets, including USA Today and The Hill, have touted declines in violent crime statistics to argue that America is becoming a safer place.
"Right now, with 2023 figures and early 2024, the trends are all pointing down, in a positive direction," Jeff Asher, whose New Orleans-based AH Datalytics is developing his own "Real-Time Crime Index," told RealClearInvestigations.
Conservative outlets, including City Journal and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, assert that minor declines in headline grabbers like homicides fail to capture
From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. had an average of 16,641 homicides a year. In 2021 and 2022, however, the country saw considerably more bloodshed, with an average of more than 22,000 annual homicides. Even if the 2023 number drops slightly, it will still represent a large increase over the recent past, before the pandemic and racial upheaval set in motion in 2020.
Many criminologists say this illlustrates one of the problems with the official numbers that are at the center of public debate: They give a distorted impression of true levels of crime. They note that crime stats have become notoriously incomplete in recent years. In some years many big cities did not report their numbers to the FBI, and there are such wide discrepancies in these tallies that the picture they provide has more blur than clarity.
As Varney will report in a bit, the FBI actually gave cities the go-ahead to not report crime.
...
But the FBI statistics aren't what they used to be, according to several criminologists who pointed to gaps in coverage and apparent errors. The problem began in 1988 when the bureau began to move toward a complex new system of reporting -- the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). It promised to provide more comprehensive detail and enable authorities to pinpoint high-crime areas, criminals, and victims more accurately.
But the transition proved to be a herculean task, so much so that the FBI allowed departments to delay their full adherence to the program even after the feds doled out $120 million to agencies to assist with compliance. Still, in 2020, 2021 and 2022, either all or some of the biggest police forces in the U.S. -- New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles -- did not provide data.
There have also been problems with the data that was submitted, including the news in 2022 of major problems with the St. Louis Police Department data, and more recent revelations that figures for sexual crimes provided by the New Orleans Police Department were wrong.
In Baltimore, the Police Department and various news reports put the total for 2022 homicides between 332 and 336, but the FBI's dataset puts the number at 272. Baltimore police officials did not reply to RCI's inquiries about the wide spread in the reported numbers, and if anyone in the city's police department had brought the matter to the FBI's attention.
The Baltimore department acknowledges its numbers may not be the same as those it submits to the FBI, but states on its website that "any comparisons are strictly prohibited."
Similarly, the police departments in Milwaukee and Nashville did not respond to questions about divergences between their stats on robberies and those from the federal bureau. Milwaukee police reported a 7 percent increase in robberies in 2023, but the FBI recorded a 13 percent decline.
An FBI spokesperson told RCI, "It is the responsibility of each state UCR [Uniform Crime Reports] program or contributing law enforcement agency to submit accurate statistics and correct existing data that are in error."
Yes, and I'm sure the blue states which have chosen a deadly decarceration agenda -- setting the criminals free to brutalize the law-abiding -- will get right on correcting their incomplete data.