Filling the Gaps of Crime Data
By Sana Khan, Senior Research Associate
The FBI's recently released crime data confirms what we know: the pandemic-era spike in crime has largely subsided. But what caused it? To understand the big picture, we need to go deeper than federal data, which is only released annually. Working with Safety and Justice Challenge cities and counties, we review jail, rebooking, and crime data as it’s released locally. With this supplemental data, can understand how crime trends measure against reforms, as well as to combat misinformation about crime spikes (or lack thereof).
This September, the FBI released crime statistics showing that nationally, violent crime decreased by 3.0 percent from 2022 to 2023. Homicides went down by 11.6 percent, and aggravated assault was down by 2.8 percent.
This decline in violent crime is notable because it followed a nationwide spike at the height of COVID-19. These new crime statistics also run counter to claims that criminal legal reforms caused the pandemic-era crime spikes—claims often made without evidence to back them up. While the updated FBI data is critical for understanding violent crime trends, there are gaps.
Growing Pains of Crime Data Collection
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program generates statistics based on offenses reported to law enforcement; it is the primary measure used by policymakers and researchers to talk about U.S. crime trends. Prior to 2021, the UCR reported crime statistics using the Summary Reporting System (SRS), where only the single most serious charge in a crime incident was reported. The FBI now only uses the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which eliminates the “hierarchy rule” of charges—recording all offenses for an incident, instead of just the highest charge. This means that FBI crime statistics prior to 2021 may appear to have been lower or underreported, since only the most serious criminal charge was accounted for.
The UCR Program relies on individual local counties voluntarily submitting accurate data to their respective states, who then submit to the FBI. With discrepancies in collection methods and data capacity limitations, the first few years of transitioning from SRS to NIBRS-only reporting resulted in data coverage gaps as some local agencies struggled to adopt NIBRS. In 2021, the first year of NIBRS-only reporting, 40 percent of 18,000 law enforcement agencies did not report crime statistics to the FBI, compared to almost all agencies reporting the previous year. In 2023, about 89 percent of these agencies reported NIBRS-only data, which will allow for more consistencies in crime trends moving forward. However, COVID-19’s peak and spikes in violent crime coincided with the reporting transition, so there will always be a blip in understanding crime at that time based on the FBI estimates alone.
COVID-19’s peak and spikes in violent crime coincided with the reporting transition, so there will always be a blip in understanding crime at that time based on the FBI estimates alone.
Another complication is that crime data, unlike other important national indicators, are not tracked in real time. Compare that to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report, which is released monthly, and is a key indicator of economic trends. This means policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders are often missing up-to-date data—and consequently, the bigger picture of the who, what, where, and why of crime. When using the FBI crime estimates, it’s important to supplement with alternate sources of crime, and juxtapose them with other policy-relevant data—especially when evaluating what did or did not cause crime spikes.
Going to the Source to Paint the Full Picture: Reforms aren’t Leading to Crime Spikes
There is a way to meaningfully understand local crime data in the context of reforms. The Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) is a national initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that supports communities across the country in identifying, implementing, and evaluating data-driven reform strategies to safely reduce jail populations. As the primary data and analytic partner of the initiative, CUNY ISLG uses crime trends and case-level jail data to understand how these reforms are working, as well as to combat misinformation about crime spikes (or lack thereof).
To do so, we supplement FBI crime statistics with publicly available crime data obtained directly from local and state government websites for each SJC community, which are updated by law enforcement agencies more often than the FBI data. Through established partnerships with jurisdictions, CUNY ISLG researchers confirm these sources to be accurate crime estimates across all time periods and ensure consistency in reporting methodology (e.g., NIBRS or SRS). Alongside the public crime data, we also collect, clean, restructure, and de-identify case-level jail data from SJC cities and counties, priming it for analysis, evaluation, and trend monitoring.
Together, with this unique jail dataset and alternate sources of crime data, we can compare crime and rebooking rates consistently and reliably before and after the reforms in the SJC sites. Because we manage these datasets ourselves, we can update data as it becomes available for each city and county, rather than relying on the once-a-year FBI data.
With something as nuanced as crime—which, especially against the backdrop of COVID-19, is subject to complex socioeconomic factors—it is important to understand data points in the context of larger trends.
With something as nuanced as crime—which, especially against the backdrop of COVID-19, is subject to complex socioeconomic factors—it is important to understand data points in the context of larger trends. Violent crime, especially homicides, should be taken extremely seriously, and action should be taken to support those impacted. However, it is difficult to interpret causality for crime changes, especially when it comes to criminal legal policies or reforms. From our unique dataset, we found a 6 percent decline in violent crime between 2022 and 2023 in 16 SJC cities and counties that have publicly available crime data. We also saw that 98 percent of people released from jail on pretrial status were largely not rebooked into jail for violent crimes, which was consistent from before SJC reforms, through the peak of COVID-19, and through 2023. We update jail data trends even more frequently through our Measuring Progress tool.
Hate Crimes: Bridging Another Gap between Reality and Reporting
Hate crimes are also reflected in the FBI data: In 2023, the FBI estimated a 0.6 percent decrease in reported hate crime incidents from 2022 to 2023, with 95.2 percent coverage of agencies participating in the hate crime data collection. Hate crime incidents are defined as offenses motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. However, there are gaps in this data collection, too: it is well-established that hate crimes are largely underreported to law enforcement. In fact, there has been a surge in hate crime incidents over the last few years according to organizations and surveys that collect this information, which include incidents not reported to law enforcement.
The most common reason for not reporting a hate incident or crime to police is that the victimization was handled through another channel, such as a school official or community organization. This highlights the role that community institutions can play in addressing these crimes. CUNY ISLG is co-leading a Participatory Action Research (PAR) study in NYC, funded by the National Institute of Justice, with seven local community-based organizations to study the role of community in preventing and responding to hate crimes; the goal is to start bridging the gap between reality and reporting, and better supporting survivors of hate crimes.
The Importance of Public Data for Public Safety
Collection of crime data is important, but it is a large task that requires more resources than law enforcement agencies may have. With the help of a data and analytic partner, government agencies and community-organizations can be better positioned to collect this data on a local level, allowing jurisdictions to capture nuances or details that are specific to their community. CUNY ISLG is leading the way in collecting, analyzing, and reporting this data in innovative ways so communities and jurisdictions can make informed policy decisions.
With the help of a data and analytic partner, government agencies and community-organizations can be better positioned to collect this data on a local level, allowing jurisdictions to capture nuances or details that are specific to their community.
Image by By Valerii Evlakhov on Adobe Stock.