The FBI’s recent revision of its crime statistics for 2022 shows that its previous claim that violent crime declined was false – and simultaneously makes 2023’s crime count look better by comparison.
Of course, the FBI did not mention its revision in last month’s press release announcing its “final” (but, apparently, preliminary) violent crime count for 2023.
Three weeks after the release, the FBI has still not reported/acknowledged that the revision turned the previously-reported drop in crime into an increase, nor that the upward revision increases the reported drop in crime last year.
The revision itself only came to light because RealClearInvestigations (RCI) noticed a sentence in the FBI’s 2023 Crime Summary report and decided to dig deeper:
“RCI discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website that states: ‘The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.’ But there is no mention that the numbers increased.
“One only sees the change by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year (which RCI did).”
Turns out, 2022’s much-touted 2.1% drop in violent crime was actually a 4.5% increase in violent crime, according to the FBI’s updated, but unpublicized, revision.
As a result of the revisions, violent crime increased across-the-board in 2022:
- Violent crimes ACTUALLY INCREASED by 80,029.
- Murders ACTUALLY INCREASED by 1,699.
- Rapes ACTUALLY INCREASED by 7,780.
- Robberies ACTUALLY INCREASED by 33,459.
- Aggravated assaults ACTUALLY INCREASED by 37,091.
“The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?” RCI asks in its report.
Good question, given that revisions alter the changes in violent crime for not just one, but two, different years.
The 2022 revision affects both the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 comparisons:
- The 2021-2022 change in violent crime is reversed from a decline of 2.1% to an (unreported) increase of 4.5%
- The (media promoted) 2022-2023 drop in violent crime is more than doubled, from 1.6% to 3.5%.
- Thus, the improvement from 2022-2023 is magnified…unless, there’s another upward revision when the FBI reports its numbers for 2024 next September.
By failing to note the upward revision to 2022’s total resulting in an increase from 2021, the FBI enabled legacy media like USA Today to plausibly run inaccurate headlines such as “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.”
Large revisions to the FBI’s violent crime totals appear to be unique to the Biden-Harris Administration, William & Mary Prof. Carl Moody noted in an interview with RCI:
“There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point.
“The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”
Even if the FBI’s violent crime count reported last month is accurate – and, it might not be – violent crime was still higher in 2023 than it was back in 2019, analysis by Crime Research reveals:
“With the FBI reported crime data, reported violent crime rate fell by 5.8% from 2020 to 2023, it was essentially flat from 2019 to 2023 (-0.2%).
“Meanwhile, while murder fell by 16.2% from 2020 to 2023, it is still above the pre-COVID levels by 9.6%. Though the latest homicide data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that the murder rate was higher in 2022 than in 2020.”