FBI crime data: ‘Turns out Trump was right’: FBI ‘quietly’ updates crime data, reveals spike

During the Sept. 10 presidential debate, Trump was fact-checked by ABC News moderator David Muir, who noted that “the FBI says violent crime overall is declining in this country.” In 2021, the FBI switched to a new crime data collection system – the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and retired its Summary Reporting System (SRS).

When Donald Trump said during the debate that criminal incidents had increased under the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, he was fact-checked. MAGA supporters said Wednesday that the FBI has quietly adjusted its 2022 numbers in recent weeks — after the debate and new numbers showed Trump was right.
First reported by RealClearInvestigations (RCI), the new figures show that the raw number of violent crime incidents – including murders, assaults and rapes – rose to 1,256,671 in 2022 from 1,197,930 in 2021, an increase of 4 .9 percent.
In October 2023, the FBI released a press release revealing its national crime data for 2022, which concluded that “national violent crime decreased by about 1.7 percent in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.”
“I looked at the data on total violent crimes from 2004 to 2022,” Carl Moody, an economics professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in the study of crime, told RealClearInvestigations. “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point.

“The major changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data,” added Moody.
Elon Musk said even the latest FBI crime data “vastly underestimates” the problem.

MAGA Supporters Claimed Donald Trump Was Right About Crime Data in ABC News Debate

Reviews of FBI crime statistics reveal how much guesswork is involved in even the “final” numbers often seized upon by politicians. The FBI does not simply count reported crimes. Instead, it offers estimates by extrapolating data from police departments that report only partial year data. The Bureau also makes estimates for cities that do not report data. The FBI’s method for generating these estimates changes over time and affects the numbers they report, RCI said.