Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, center, next to D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, holds up a crime data sheet during a meeting in March. a report
“As a democratic society,” said John Roman, director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at the University of Chicago, “we need to know what the facts are, so elected leaders can solve the problem as it exists, not as it’s messaged.” Homicides in America have plunged recently to levels not seen since the 1960s, said Roman, who chairs the working group that issued the report, but “the public reaction is, ‘How are we going to fight this violence epidemic?’, when there is no epidemic.
The council cited shoplifting as a prime example. Retailers reported a significant spike in theft starting in 2020, locking up merchandise and increasing security, but police data showed that shoplifting had risen only to pre-pandemic levels, the council said. Facing that discrepancy, local governments decided to act, with 24 states creating retail theft task forces, while others enacted tougher sentences or rolled back previous reforms.
Another problem that has bedeviled crime statisticians is the slow switch nationally from the Uniform Crime Reports tallied up by the FBI since 1930, to the National Incident-Based Reporting System instituted in January 2021. The Uniform Crime Reports covered seven major crimes: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and auto theft. For decades, police and crime reporters used the statistics from those seven crimes to mark how a jurisdiction was faring.