A pair of House Republicans demanded on Thursday that the FBI clarify the process by which it updates its crime statistics, accusing the bureau of giving off a false impression that crime has decreased in recent years.
Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wrote in a letter to the FBI that they believed the bureau had quietly updated its statistics last year to include “thousands of murders, rapes and other violent crimes that were originally omitted from the FBI’s crime data.”
“The FBI did not mention this significant data revision in its press release about violent crime data for 2023,” Jordan and Biggs wrote.
The FBI provides a complex dashboard with historical crime data based on statistics it gathers from local law enforcement across the country. The bureau periodically distills the data into summaries that it releases annually. Its summary this year showed violent crime decreased 3% in 2023.
The FBI said last year that violent crime decreased 1.7% in 2022; however, Jordan and Biggs said that was not the case.
“FBI revised its 2022 data to show that violent crime had actually increased by 4.5 percent from 2021,” the congressmen wrote, citing a RealClearPolitics report.
The report found that the FBI had initially reported that violent crime fell in 2022 but then updated the data without notifying the public, and the new data reflected a spike in crime.
Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst who publishes blog posts on the FBI, said recently that revisions were normal, that the FBI data was imperfect, and that despite small percentage discrepancies year over year, “we can say that the FBI’s 2023 estimates show a continued small decline in violent crime with a historically large decline in murder.”
“Do the 2022 and 2023 revisions majorly alter our understanding of national crime trends? In my opinion, not at all,” Asher wrote.
Jordan and Biggs, however, noted that the Biden-Harris administration touted the statistics, prior to them being revised, as a sign that violent crime was substantially improving.
“The initial 2022 data, before it was corrected, was heralded as ‘historic declines’ in the crime rate,” the Republicans observed.
The FBI declined to comment on the congressmen’s letter and instead pointed to a statement about the scrutiny it has drawn for its crime data discrepancies.
“The FBI stands behind each of our Crime in the Nation publications,” the bureau said. “In 2022, the estimated violent crime rate decreased 1.7 percent from 2021.”
The FBI explained that it switched its crime reporting program over to a new data collection system in 2021, going from using a “traditional Summary Reporting System” to a “National Incident-Based Reporting System.” The bureau indicated that a significant portion of local agencies were initially unable to report their statistics to the FBI during what appears to have been a rocky transition period to a new reporting system.
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The FBI said it soon plans to provide public data updates monthly instead of annually.
“The next phase will see a shift to monthly data releases to promote transparency and provide an opportunity for consumers to review data based on more timely crime counts with the understanding that data will be continuously updated,” the bureau said.