Crime and public safety are major issues for Americans in this year's election, which is probably why the Democrats and mainstream media are pushing the narrative that things aren't as bad as you think and crime is actually going down under the Biden administration. In the words of former President George W. Bush, they're using "fuzzy math."
Critics like John Lott Jr. with the Crime Prevention Research Center say the media is using misleading stats to perpetuate the crime-is-down narrative. ABC News anchor David Muir admonished former President Donald Trump during the last debate that "the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country." Technically that is true, but Lott points out the FBI statistics Muir is relying on only measure reported crimes. "While there has been a 5% drop in reported violent crime since the Biden administration took office, the national crime victimization survey shows there has been a 55% increase in total violent crime over that period of time," he tells KTRH. "There's never been such a large percentage increase over any three-year period in the 51-year history of that survey."
Since many victims don't report crimes, and many local police departments don't give accurate or timely crime info to the FBI, the crime victimization survey is considered a more accurate gauge of crime statistics than FBI numbers. But even the "official" FBI stats are often underreported, as was the case last year when the FBI revised its numbers on reported violent crimes from a 2% decline to a 4% increase. Of course, the revised numbers are often ignored by the media.
"When the FBI's data initially came out, you had headline after headline saying that violent crime is falling," says Lott. "And none of them pointing out it's just reported crime as opposed to total crime, nor that the FBI revised its numbers from last year and that even reported violent crime had gone up."