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Our research at Real Clear Investigations on the “Stealth Edit: FBI Quietly Revises Violent Crime Stats” continues to receive extensive media attention.
John R. Lott, the President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, drives Democrats/socialists/communist (D/s/cs) crazy. He does it the old-fashioned way: he does factual, honest, reproducible research about crime, guns and related issues and provides his data sets and methodology on request. Anti-liberty/gun “researchers” like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) don’t do that. . . .
In Lies, damned lies and statistics, I noted the FBI’s crime statistics are grossly underreported. A substantial number of law enforcement agencies no longer report crime statistics to the FBI. . . . Then along comes Lott, making them crazy again, but will the truth be enough to make a difference in the election? . . .
Lott tells us the FBI, in September of 2024, made a stealthy press release noting they updated the 2022 numbers (FBI reports always run two years behind). The FBI only said it “updated” 2022 numbers, not that the update reveals crime was up 4.5%, which is a 6.6% jump. Keep in mind at least 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes go unreported? Why only 30% of property crimes? People need police reports for insurance reimbursements. Lott notes the FBI underreported 1,699 murders and 54,216 vehicle thefts in 2022, so it’s impossible to credit them with anything approaching accuracy, though it’s clear murder rates are up 9.6%.
Think that’s bad? The FBI stealthily reported violent crime was up 4.5%, but the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reported a 29.1% rise. There’s that chasm between what D/s/cs like Kamala Harris claim and American’s “lived experience.” How bad is it? This bad: [Long quote from Lott’s report] . . .
Mike McDaniel, “FBI credibility?” American Thinker, October 20, 2024.
Now, in fairness to Muir, the FBI did originally claim that crime was down. The problem is that the FBI’s numbers were obviously wrong. The proof? A recent but quiet FBI revision updated the numbers to reveal a 4.5 percent increase in violent crime in 2022.
“The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults,” according to John R. Lott Jr. of RealClearInvestigations, who was the actual journalist who discovered the stealthy revision.
What’s weird is that the revision was made so quietly that nobody except him even noticed it, including the corporate propaganda media stooges who’d rushed to report the FBI’s original numbers, i.e., the wrong ones. . . .
RealClearInvestigations dug into the FBI’s data and found that the law enforcement agency had been criminally misreporting crime statistics in a way that just happened to help Biden-Harris look like it’s been tough on crime.
Last fall, for example, the FBI reported that violent crime had dropped by 2.1% in 2022. That number was celebrated by Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the press, which said it was proof that Donald Trump was lying about a crime wave.
RealClearInvestigations discovered that the FBI had secretly updated its crime statistics, and instead of showing a 2.1% drop in violent crime, there was a 4.5% increase in 2022.
These weren’t minor revisions in the crime numbers.
Where the FBI originally reported 21,288 fewer cases of violent crime in 2022, its revised number shows a 58,741 increase. Instead of a slight drop in the number of burglaries, the new numbers show an increase of nearly 30,000. Every category was revised sharply upward. . . . .
Staff, “FBI Caught Red-Handed Fudging Crime Data,” Tipp & Insights, October 19, 2024.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently revised its national violent crime statistics for 2022, quietly revealing that violent crime increased by 4.5% instead of the initially reported 2.1% decrease.
RealClearInvestigations reported that the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report initially indicated that the United States experienced a 2.1% decrease in violent crime from 2021 to 2022; however, the recent change shows that violent crime actually increased by 4.5% from 2021 to 2022. The FBI’s quiet revision of the 2022 violent crime statistics comes shortly after the FBI announced that the 2023 Uniform Crime Report showed a 3% decrease in violent crime. . . .
Congressional Republicans voiced outrage Wednesday over the FBI quietly updating its violent crime statistics.
The FBI previously said violent crime decreased by “an estimated 1.7%” from 2021 to 2022. Data summaries show 1,253,716 violent crimes were reported in 2021, while 1,232,428 were reported in 2022.
However, the agency’s updated data summary now reports 1,197,930 violent crimes in 2021 and 1,256,671 in 2022. The figures represent a 4.9% increase, as opposed to the 1.7% drop the FBI previously publicized.
House and Senate Republicans expressed on social media the need for accurate data following news of the shift, which was first identified by RealClearInvestigations. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., wrote on X that the FBI “engaged in a calculated effort” with the Biden administration and their “media allies” to deceive the public.
“This blatant manipulation of the facts by Democrats and the media has potentially put American lives in danger by falsely leading them to believe they are safe—especially hardworking Pennsylvanians—who face the consequences of the crime crisis every day,” Rep. Meuser wrote. . . .
The FBI recently revised its 2022 crime statistics, which now indicate an increase in violent crime, contradicting earlier reports of a decline.
Former President Donald Trump, often challenged on the campaign trail for his claims about rising crime, faced criticism rooted in the original FBI data suggesting crime was falling.
However, the updated numbers tell a different story, showing that violent offenses actually grew last year, per the New York Post.
RealClearInvestigations first reported the revision, highlighting that violent crimes — including murders, assaults, and rapes — increased from 1,197,930 incidents in 2021 to 1,256,671 in 2022, marking a 4.9% jump. This change came despite earlier FBI estimates released in 2023, which stated violent crime had dropped by 1.7% from 2021 to 2022.
The discrepancy underscores the complexities behind collecting and analyzing crime data.
Initially, the FBI claimed the violent crime rate had decreased by 2.1% in relation to the population. However, the newly revised data suggests an increase of about 4.5% during the same period. Notably, the FBI did not mention these changes in its annual crime report released in September 2023, where it announced a 3% decline in crime for the following year.
The Crime Prevention Research Center flagged the subtle data correction through a detailed spreadsheet comparison.
Carl Moody, an economics professor specializing in crime data at the College of William & Mary, observed that such significant revisions are unprecedented. According to Moody, the lack of transparency surrounding these adjustments erodes trust in the FBI’s crime reports. . . .
Initially, the FBI reported in September 2023 that violent crime had dropped by 2.1% in 2022, a statistic used by many Democrats to counter claims by Donald Trump that crime was rising. However, revised figures now show violent crime increased by 4.5%, including more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
The FBI made no formal announcement regarding these changes, only noting on its website that the data had been updated. Researchers, like Carl Moody of the College of William & Mary, expressed concern about the significant revisions, stating that changes of this magnitude are unusual and unexplained. “It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they haven’t explained these large changes,” said Dr. Thomas Marvell, president of Justec Research. . . . .
When Donald Trump said during the debate that crime incidents increased in the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, he was fact-checked. MAGA supporters Wednesday said the FBI quietly adjusted its 2022 figures in recent weeks — after the debate and the new numbers show Trump was right.
First reported by RealClearInvestigations (RCI), the new numbers 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 per cent.In October of 2023, the FBI put out a press release unveiling its national crime data for 2022, which found that “national violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7 per cent in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates.”
“I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022,” College of William & Mary economics professor Carl Moody, who specializes in studying 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. . . .
A recent FBI revision appears to back Trump. After reporting there was a 2.1% drop in violent crimes in 2022, the FBI now admits there was actually a 4.5% increase.
According to crime and data expert John Lott, the new numbers reflect a net increase of 80,029 violent crimes in 2022 over 2021. He found that under the umbrella of violent crime, there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults that year. . . .
