What to Know
- Both sides have cited statistics from credible sources, but have painted very different pictures from the data.
- Although there are year-to-year disparities between the two major national reports, both sources show generally the same trend: crime has steadily declined since the 1990s.
- Experts and local law enforcement are careful to note that no matter the claims made by any national political candidate, who sits in the Oval Office doesn't often change local policing policy.
- Violent crime trends are driven by a variety of factors. Socioeconomic changes locally are one of the many reasons crime may rise or fall.
Crime is always a hot button issue in a presidential race.
But with contradicting claims about crime rates from both sides, it can be difficult to discern whether crime rates are truly up or down.
According to a Harvard-CAPS Harris Poll, crime is the number four most important issue for voters in the upcoming election.
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Nationally, both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have been adamant that crime rates have declined under their administration. The White House released a statement last month saying violent crime is at a near 50-year low, according to new FBI data.
But former President Donald Trump has pushed back against the Biden-Harris administration with claims that crime has risen since his time in office. In his September debate with Harris, Trump claimed “Crime here is up and through the roof.”
Trump has previously cited statistics to support his claims. At a rally in Philadelphia in June, Trump said “According to the much better National Crime Victimization Survey, there has actually been a 43% increase in violent crime since I left office.”
Both sides are citing statistics from credible sources, so how can they draw such different conclusions?
Politicians tend to cherry pick statistics
Trump and Harris have each cited statistics from national crime reports — the BJS’s National Crime Victimization Survey and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. These two resources are considered the standard for national crime data, but the numbers they collect vary slightly.
The FBI’s UCR relies on crime reports submitted from police agencies across the country, while the BJS’s NCVS relies on survey participants to report crimes committed against them.
And although there are year-to-year disparities between the NCVS and UCR, both sources show generally the same trend: crime has steadily declined since the 1990s.
Regardless of that clear national trend, politicians often highlight statistics that benefit their campaign.
"Depending on where you stand, the campaign has decided which prime reporting method you’re interested in," says Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.
The 2023 NCVS and 2023 UCR were released in September, and neither shows an increase in crime from 2022 to 2023. The NCVS shows crime remained mostly unchanged, while the UCR shows a 3% decrease in violent crime.
Although new data contradict Trump’s comments on the rise in crime, he has disregarded the need for data entirely, preferring instead to cite what comes down to "feelings."
“You don't have to know anything about numbers. If you live in this country, you know crime has gone up," Trump said at a campaign event in Pennsylvania on Sept. 23.
Kevin Drakulich, associate director of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University, says that although many politicians take data out of context, Trump's claims about crime are particularly harmful.
"I would hate to have to draw a false equivalency between how both campaigns are approaching the data in each of [Trump's] elections," Drakulich says. "It's not cherry picking to purely make up things."
Crime data is complicated
Politicians may take numbers out of context, but it's surprising that both sides can find reliable data to back their different agendas.
The reason behind these conflicting statistics may have to do with the data sources themselves. Although both the NCVS and UCR are considered credible sources for crime data, each has benefits and drawbacks.
The NCVS covers a wider breadth of crime than the UCR, as many crimes go unreported to the police. But murder is not included in NCVS results, as victims cannot respond to the survey. It also has a significant margin of error.
The UCR offers reliable estimates of crimes reported to the police. But in 2021, the FBI changed how it collects crime data. Many agencies were unable to submit data to the FBI and only 65% of the United States’ population was covered by the 2021 UCR.
Since 2021, the FBI has solved this problem. In 2022, 93.5% of the population was covered by the UCR and in 2023, 95.2% was covered.
It's not uncommon for the two reports from different samples to differ in year-to-year crime rates.
Presidents don't command local police departments
Candidates on both sides can use complex crime data to debate how their administrations handled crime. But experts say the federal government isn't the only influence on crime trends.
"The Department of Justice can provide money that basically goes to local police departments," says Drakulich. "The federal government can influence that, but local police departments are not under the jurisdiction of the presidency."
Violent crime trends are driven by a variety of factors. Socioeconomic changes can cause crime to rise or fall. Between the Trump and Biden administrations, murder rates that spiked in 2020 were likely influenced by the pandemic.
Because there are so many factors that influence crime, different cities experience their own ebbs and flows in crime rates. Mark Bliss, a deputy chief of the Detroit Police Department, explains that the federal government can't cater to all police departments.
"Each department and each location has different wants and needs," says Bliss. "If the federal government is in line with that, then that's great. But if it's not, then we will continue to push what we have to do to keep our specific community safe."
Detroit, which once had a crime-ridden reputation, has seen a massive decline in violent crime. Bliss credits some of this decline to resources provided by the federal government.
He says federal agencies like the FBI, DEA and and ATF often assist investigations, and federal grants have enabled the Detroit Police Department to purchase equipment they otherwise couldn't.
But these federal institutions don't change much from one president to the next.
"I think it would be fair to say that, you know, who's the president or political party, it really has very, very little to do with [federal resources for local policing] whatsoever," Bliss says. "It doesn't stop what I call 'the basics of policing.'"
