Crime has become a political football, kicked back and forth across the electoral playing field. The public is receiving conflicting narratives about crime. One side argues that crime is increasing, while the other claims crime is on the decline — and that any belief to the contrary is driven by mere perception rather than reality.
“People will use crime data to say whatever they want,” said Jeff Asher, a criminologist and co-founder of AH Datalytics. “When you don’t have that certainty of having nearly every agency reporting data, it means that you need a lot of literacy to be able to combat items that are being stated in bad faith.”
In 2014, California passed Prop. 47, reclassifying a list of felony crimes as misdemeanors. The idea was that defendants would still face accountability, but with misdemeanors rather than felonies on their records, they could find jobs more easily.
However, in some California cities, district attorneys announced they would no longer prosecute theft under $950. In these jurisdictions, theft was no longer either a felony or a misdemeanor — from a practical standpoint, it was decriminalized. Career criminals, gangs and organized crime groups took it as a green light, regularly shoplifting upwards of $25,000 per store per day. Stores began to close because they could not withstand shoplifting at that level.
This past year, the NAACP’s Oakland chapter demanded local officials declare a state of emergency on crime. This demand, initially criticized as echoing Republican talking points, was later endorsed by the regional NAACP.
The impact of Prop. 47 has continued to have devastating impact on urban centers. Last year, federal government agencies in San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi Federal Building recommended that employees start working from home because it was no longer deemed “safe” to commute to the office. Commercial real estate values soon plummeted, with buildings selling for 30-50% of their worth just two years prior.
The plight of our cities is not limited to California. In Minneapolis, two office buildings that sold for $73.7 million in 2019 were sold for just $6.5 million recently — a sales price representing less than 10% of the buildings’ original value. The default rate for commercial mortgage-backed security loans has surged to 41.6% in June, up from just 5.7% a year earlier, according to data from real estate analytics firm Trepp.
The common thread is rising crime. Public safety is the cornerstone of any society. When cities fail to ensure safety, crime will increase. When crime increases, businesses will close. As businesses close, commercial property values plummet, default rates soar and tax revenues collapse.
Politically, the two major parties are at odds over crime. One side insists that crime is up and cites various statistics from urban areas. The other side disputes this, pointing to recent FBI data arguing that crime is actually falling.
The FBI reported that violent crime across the U.S. dipped to near pre-pandemic levels in 2022. It also maintains that the violent crime rate ticked down from about 377 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2022 to roughly 364 per 100,000 people in 2023. FBI Deputy Assistant Director Brian Griffith notes in its report that while violent crime is slightly higher than in 2019, the overall trend shows a decline.
The divide between these two arguments could not be more stark. The reconciliation of these arguments is challenging, requiring a careful examination of incomplete statistics and regional disparities — and the political motivations that lie at the heart of the matter.
Part of the problem stems from a transition in the FBI data collection. A few years ago, the FBI phased out its nearly century-old system and began relying on the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). In the initial year after the change, the FBI did not have enough information in certain regions to produce meaningful results. The new system required expensive upgrades, which led to disparities. Some large police departments, including Miami-Dade’s, resumed reporting data to the FBI in 2022. But the nation’s two largest police agencies — New York and Los Angeles — are still missing from federal data. The FBI has acknowledged that not all law enforcement agencies in the U.S. participate in its new crime reporting program.
It is important to note that there are other federal agencies that track crime. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports a nearly 20% increase in homicides from 2019 to 2023, a significant contrast to the FBI’s numbers. This discrepancy has led organizations like the Coalition for Law, Order, and Safety (CLOS) to determine that true crime rates may be higher than what the FBI’s statistics reflect. CLOS argued that the FBI’s inconsistent data collection system creates challenges for law enforcement and hinders an accurate understanding of crime.
The Department of Justice’s National Crime Victimization Survey paints a starkly different picture of crime, showing a 37% increase in violent crime between 2020 and last year. Specific crimes also saw significant rises:
- Rape increased by 42%
- Robbery by 63%
- Assault by 34%
- Violent crime (excluding simple assault) by 55%
- Domestic violence by 32%
- Stranger violence by 61%
- Violent crime involving a weapon by 56%
- Motor vehicle theft by 42%
Each year, data are obtained from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 persons in approximately 150,000 households. Respondents report crimes they experienced in the prior six months.
FBI data might also be skewed by prosecutorial decisions in certain urban areas. Many district attorneys elected on reform platforms have opted not to prosecute a range of offenses, affecting arrest rates. For example, after widespread protests at universities earlier this year over the Israel-Hamas dispute, many arrested individuals had their charges dropped by district attorneys unwilling to prosecute the cases. When certain crimes are no longer prosecuted, local police may stop making arrests for those offenses, which in turn affects crime statistics. In Houston, a press conference proudly announced a drop in crime, only for it to be revealed later that over 260,000 cases had been administratively closed due to staffing shortages.
The denial that crime is increasing could be a political strategy in itself as a defense of the bad bail and criminal justice reforms that have been enacted in certain states. In New York, for instance, legislators have already rolled back the state’s problematic bail reform measures three times. If they were to admit that crime is increasing after all that, public outrage could intensify even more.
Ultimately, the politics of crime has a limited shelf life. The public demands safety and the political football of crime can only be kicked around for so long before there’s a backlash. When one party cites incomplete data to claim crime rates are dropping, despite experts warning the report may not reflect the full reality, the public has every reason to lose trust. Especially when other data contradicts the FBI’s findings, people may choose to rely on what they witness firsthand. As they see businesses closing, commercial properties selling for a fraction of their value and rising default rates, citizens may draw their own conclusions about crime based on what’s happening in their own communities.
