FBI: US violent crime falls again, hits pre-Covid levels

What happened

The FBI said yesterday that violent crime fell 3% in the U.S. last year while murder and non-negligent homicide dropped 11.6% — the sharpest decline in two decades — and reported rapes were down 9.4%. The FBI's annual 2023 Crime in the Nation Report also found that while property crimes decreased 2.4% from 2022 to 2023 and burglary fell 7.6%, car thefts rose 12.6%.

Who said what

Crime "soared" during the Covid-19 pandemic, and "many of the drops being reported reflect a recovery from the 2020 and 2021 spikes," The Washington Post said. A "reasonable person" would agree "we are looking at crime rates at a return to pre-pandemic levels," FBI Deputy Assistant Director Brian Griffith told The Associated Press.

The FBI's numbers "further undermine" Donald Trump's claim that "crime is on the rise across the country," Reason said, and his "assertion that 'homicides are skyrocketing' is plainly inconsistent" with the FBI report and other data. Trump said at a campaign stop yesterday that "only a stupid person would say crime has gone down," and "you don't have to know anything about numbers" to get that.

The report was based on crime reports from 16,334 law enforcement agencies representing 94.3 % of the U.S. population, including every police department in cities with a million or more inhabitants.

What next?

The FBI won't release 2024 numbers until well into 2025. But preliminary January-June figures from 69 U.S. cities released last month by the Major Cities Chiefs Association show a "continuation of the sharp drop in killings seen in 2023, with homicides down 17%," the Post said.

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