FBI Stats Show Crime Still Declining, Despite the Assertions of Alarmists and | Hacker News Reader

FBI Stats Show Crime Still Declining, Despite the Assertions of Alarmists and

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A little anecdotal but I have lived in the heart of a downtown area (not a major city but decent population) for 25 years now, and we recently cut some funding for the local PD, which was very politically heated due to the Police Chief's city hall connections.

What happened afterward was immediately noticeable - the police force seems to have very little interest in doing their jobs ever since then. The response time for a call has gone way up, and sometimes they do not even show up at all. On my particular street, which is nestled in a high-ish crime area, we formed a neighborhood watch and have a police liason we speak to but most residents are completely unwilling to call the police anymore because it is super pointless and exasperating. My breaking point was when I caught a mail thief red handed, my mail still sticking out of his bag, and flagged down a cop that happened to be nearby. They refused to even listen to me and the guy just walked away. So, part of me wonders if the city's crime stats have "dropped" due to people just giving up on reporting crimes.

Of course this is super difficult to prove and I don't think it's a national trend but definitely something I and my neighbors have observed in my city.

I grew up in a rough neighborhood in the 80s, about a mile away from the nearest precinct. We had regular shootings, and my parents complain that the police would wait approximately 30 minutes before driving the 2 minutes from the precinct to the scene of the shooting. So the indifference you're describing is nothing new to me. But neither is the notion of police departments juicing their stats.

Serious crimes like Murder can’t be ignored. They might take their time but they have to report it.

I know people believe this but go look up stats on missing persons, particularly black women, and come to this same conclusion. A murder only gets reported when the body is found

Kinda worth noting that crime reporting to the FBI is a bit messed up.

https://stateline.org/2023/10/27/politicians-love-to-cite-cr...

So, all the discussion of stats tends to get washed if the national crime statistics don’t include the data from the areas they are reporting on.

That doesn't negate the trend of the past two decades of decreasing crime rates, that report is from 2022 and 71% is not big enough for me to think that is has a massive impact on recent numbers. You can also go on violent crime and murder which is almost always reported

When crime is not enforced, the burden of reporting crime is not borne. It is a faux pas that SF has slyly adopted

Yes, you’re being accurate and it’s likely somewhat like you’re saying. I mean, rational points!

But not including or disclosing this in crime statistic reporting while using them as justification for critical decisions and presenting them to the public as the truth is deeply disingenuous isn’t it?

So what data should they use? Decisions need to be made and they need to use the info they have on hand. Sure, more is definitely better but perfection is the enemy of progress. I don't know if they ever state that is the end all be all truth and I've seen numerous pieces outlining the omissions. I think its still important to release and make decisions on because some data is better than none at all

Or people just aren’t reporting crime because at this point, in many places, it’s fruitless.

I know I don’t report crime anymore, got robbed in Seattle recently, didn’t bother calling it in.

Murder is almost always reported and has been on a decline, along with general violent crime, since the 90s

Make sure to also add up attempted murders, assaults with deadly weapon and things like that.

If you don't, every time medicine improves, it will look like people are less murderous. In reality the victims might just have access to better hospitals.

That is why I mentioned "general violent crime"

But the reason you mentioned murder in the first place is that, unlike general violent crime, it always gets reported.

So it turns out that both measures are kind of hard to use, for different reasons.

Personally, that's no reason to be solipsistic about it. I can still form coherent ideas about whether or not there is more crime than usual. But it does leave enough wiggle room for people to lie about the issue for political reasons, in whichever direction you least prefer.

Not true, even for murder stats. It’s perfectly reasonable to challenge the accuracy of the numbers. The FBI and NYC use the same definitions for murder and starting in 2023 and 2024 their numbers haven’t matched. The FBI is reporting -13% fewer murders in 2023 than the NYPD recorded and -47% fewer murders so far in 2024.

If you look at absolute numbers, the NYPD is recording year over year increases in major violent felonies whereas the FBI is saying there are year over year decreases.

As I stated elsewhere, this is very recent and does not negate the overall downward trend happening since the 90s

I suggest you report it. Obviously it’s not fruitless, because it will be useful for crime stats.

There's no requirement to report stats to the FBI and several municipalities and local sheriff's have stopped. The stats the FBI have are not a very accurate picture of reality.

That's only the last two years and does not negate over two decades of data showing a downward trend

When was it ever fruitful? They always just showed up for the report for insurance, if that.

When there was a chance that police would actually investigate and try to do something. Right now the cops won’t even show up unless property crime is > $1000 in most cities.

Even if they are caught they are usually released without bail and have no need to ever show up for court after that.

It wasn’t always this way, this is a recent change.

My entire life police haven't done shit. I'm in my mid 30s from the midwest

Same. Called them a few times when I was younger. Never showed up, stopped bothering. The fire department, on the other hand, was 100% reliable despite having a fraction of the funding.

While it is usually great politics to scream that "our side" will reduce crime by being tougher (both side of the aisle take part in this) Overwhelming evidence shows the rise and fall of violent ( and other) crime based on lead in the environment. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-c... Unfortunately, unscrupulous types realized how much money could be made from imprisoning people and billing both them and the government - there is now a large lobby that works to push the status quo and even to increase the number of prisoners. ( See immigration policy)

Not just lead but a well studied mechanism of crime is simply poverty.

The more poverty, the more crime. Crime rates are very highly associated with material conditions

If you find your interest piqued by this article and want to dive a little bit deeper into specific examples, I highly recommend reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling.

Yes, there are problems with crime reporting. Yes, violent crimes have been on a downward trend since the 1990s. Things can be both bad and getting better at the same time.

Sadly, my vehicle has been broken into more times in the last two years than all previous years combined.

As noted in the article: crime is down with 72% of the law enforcement agencies reporting. No mention of which agencies have not reported yet (Chicago, Baltimore, other inner city high-crime areas?)

From the FBI, the actual numbers will not be released: "The number of incidents will be publicly released when 80 percent participation levels are met."

This feels like a heavily biased article in an election year.

....what?

I mean, as you noted, the article says that 72% of reporting agencies saw a decrease. That's going to be true independent of any bias of the outstanding/non-reporting population. I don't see how your point is meaningful.

I also disagree that the article was 'heavily biased', given it spent roughly half its length talking about the issues with the FBI datasets, and that it's written in response to an espoused narrative that isn't even congruent with the data we do have.

Actual report/article: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2024-qu...

How to lie with statistics, election year edition.

Related from a few months ago:

The U.S. crime rate is still dropping, FBI data shows

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40229307

This isn't surprising, fox news and other news networks barrage their viewers with crime reports constantly telling them crime is on the rise, then when this report came out they said "but doesn't it feel like crime is on the rise?"

Like yea cause you barrage your viewers with a torrent of fear mongering nonsense

It’s not only Fox News, one of my favorite YouTubers who just drives around the country filming things, no political content whatsoever, recently took a trip to Oakland and couldn’t help but comment on how disgusting the city has become and how crime has skyrocketed. He even took a trip to the infamous In N Out Burger and Taco Bell which have closed their indoor dining due to crime.

I guess something else to note is that a lot of people will perceive people on the street with mental health issues or experiencing homelessness as "crime"

During the pandemic less working people were out on the streets making the proportion of homeless people higher, so as people start going back to work there is a change in the proportion and some people (incorrectly) equate that to an increase in crime

Also, some places tend to not take reports anymore for the most common crimes - or people just stop trying to report them.

That tends to happen with the problem is overwhelming, like… Oakland.

Dumb people are looking for scapegoat minorities and factors to rationalize their discontent when they should be blaming the very rich for lobbying against their interests.

Senile leaders? Check.

Irrational spending on military? Check.

Rampant Censorship? Check.

Imprisoning political opponents? Check.

Media is basically State Propaganda? Check.

Widespread Corruption and Incompetence? Check.

--Completely bogus statistics that gaslight people seeing the reality? CHECK!!!!

It's offical Americans! You are living on the Soviet Union.

4 Reasons We Should Worry About Missing Crime Data https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/07/13/fbi-crime-rate...

Then it all changed in 2021. In an effort to fully modernize the system, the FBI stopped taking data from the old summary system and only accepted data through the new system. Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn’t catch up with the changes on time.

More than 6,000 law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI’s national crime data last year, representing nearly one-third of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies. This means a quarter of the U.S. population wasn't represented in the federal crime data last year, according to The Marshall Project’s analysis.

Of the 19 biggest law enforcement agencies — each of which police more than 1 million people — seven were missing from the FBI’s 2022 crime data. The missing agencies include the LAPD, the NYPD, and police departments in Phoenix, San Jose and New York's Suffolk County.

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