Presidential candidates clash over who will do best to reduce rising crime, Louisiana’s governor joined with the Legislature to make a raft of changes to combat this, while local leaders as in New Orleans preen over a measured drop in it as well as those in Shreveport. This begs the question: as some indicators show crime rates falling nationally with most jurisdictions reflecting that, can politicians in Louisiana or elsewhere take credit for that – if it even exists?
Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released final statistics through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program that showed nationally violent crime declined an estimated 3 percent in 2023 from the year before, while murders and non-negligent manslaughter dropped nearly 12 percent. The overall rate now stands just above the 2019 level prior to the spike observed during the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and is close to returning to reflecting the long-term secular decline in violent crime over the past three decades, although it basically has been flat since 2012. Perhaps better, preliminary numbers for 2024 show a continued decline.
While good news, it may not be all that it’s cracked up to be, beginning with that the FBI’s system (which underwent a major change as the pandemic took hold) is a measure of crime reported or discovered by law enforcement, while different measures tell the opposite story. The Bureau of Justice Statistics compiles the National Crime Victimization Survey which measures crime not reported to law enforcement as well, with the exception of homicides and manslaughter because the dead tell no tales although these generally comprise about a percentage point of total violent crime. NCVS numbers typically differ, sometimes significantly, from the UCR, and it reported a small proportional increase for 2023 after double-digit spikes in 2021 and 2022 but a big dip in 2020. In fact, for these years the absolute differences were for the NCVS starting in 2020 29.31 percentage points lower, 20.18 higher, 24.81 higher, and 7.63 higher.