Stephen Dinan at the Washington Times has a long article that was motivated by our work on whether crime rates are going up or down. Here is part of his article that directly discusses our work.
. . . “The question is: Do you want to look at only crimes reported to police, or do you want to look at total crimes, reported and unreported?” said John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
For Mr. Lott, the answer is clear. He says the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows a more accurate trend.
“We have two different sources, and I think people who know the issue would say the BJS is kind of the gold standard for doing this stuff,” he said. . . .
Harris campaign spokesperson James Singer said: “Crime is down. Border crossings are down. Donald Trump’s angry rants do not change the facts or the results. Under Trump, America was less safe, and we saw unprecedented violence, chaos and division.”
Media fact-checkers generally side with Mr. Biden.
He claimed earlier this year that crime was “near a record 50-year low,” and PolitiFact, using the FBI data as support, rated that as true. The outfit briefly acknowledged the crime victimization survey and glossed over data showing an increase in 2022 by saying the rates are still “far lower” than in the 1990s.
Stateline declared last month that “crime rates are decreasing.”
CNN, also citing FBI and other police-based data, said it is “clear crime has indeed declined to some extent.”
Mr. Lott said refereeing crime trends used to be easier because FBI crime reports and Bureau of Justice Statistics victimization surveys generally agreed. If one went up, the other did too.
Now that they are diverging, Mr. Lott said, he suspects the victimization survey is correct and the report-based approach is missing crimes.
Average arrest rates in large cities have fallen dramatically. In the years before the pandemic, 44% of violent crime reports ended with arrests. That fell to 20% in 2022, Mr. Lott said.
“It’s no surprise you’re going to have a big increase in crime rate when you have a plummeting of arrests,” he said. “We’ve known for a long time whether or not people report crimes to the police is related to whether people think something is going to happen — that people are going to get caught and punished.”
Mr. Lott said police may not record all the crimes that people think they have reported. In recent years, some departments have told 911 callers to dial their non-emergency line if no one is in immediate danger. Callers may not follow up but would tell the victimization survey they reported a crime. . . .
Polling has consistently shown concerns about crime, with Americans saying they want lawmakers to do something about it.
Mr. Lott said they observe everyday interactions. For example, when people walk into a drugstore in a major city, they may suddenly be confronted with security gates at the doors and wares behind locked glass. Mr. Lott said the companies aren’t installing glass cases because of perceptions but because of loss figures.
“People see that. They know that’s new,” he said.
