I think your hypothesis that "attempted murder" could have been coded as murder makes sense. What are the codes? Could someone fat finger the mistake? Could someone have misremembered the correct code for murder, maybe because they use it so rarely? Or, worse, could someone have written a cheat sheet (taped to their monitor maybe) with the wrong code on it?
These kinds of coding errors happen in lots of contexts where complex systems have been set up to capture fine-grained data (Medical records come to mind in this context).
Folks at the FBI fully understand that law enforcement agencies are not reporting crime correctly. With police staffing levels being low and with confusion over the NIBRS, there are going to be errors.
But misreporting has been going on long before the NIBRS. The FBI offers months and times of crime that are clearly inaccurate because agencies are not providing the information thus defaulting to inexact times and months.
On average, U.S. residents experienced approximately 246,900 hate crime victimizations each year between 2005 and 2019 per the National Crime Victimization Survey versus 11,634 reported by the FBI in 2022. Yet we are making policy and having a public discussion over the wrong numbers.
The rate of crime reporting for cyber crimes or juvenile crimes or retail theft is ridiculously low let alone property or violent crimes.
I'm beginning to think that, beyond homicides, "reported" crime statistics are wildly inaccurate for an endless number of reasons. I do not blame the FBI. I believe that the problem lies with individual agencies and state reporting systems yet no one wants to take this on because it's essentially a voluntary system as to participation.
I had a two hour conversation with a reporter from USA Today partially discussing FBI statistics. He was quite surprised by the realities of "reported" crime data.
There doesn't seem to be a solution but "reported" crimes need to come with a disclosure. I believe that anything over or under ten percent needs to be used cautiously.
I think your hypothesis that "attempted murder" could have been coded as murder makes sense. What are the codes? Could someone fat finger the mistake? Could someone have misremembered the correct code for murder, maybe because they use it so rarely? Or, worse, could someone have written a cheat sheet (taped to their monitor maybe) with the wrong code on it?
These kinds of coding errors happen in lots of contexts where complex systems have been set up to capture fine-grained data (Medical records come to mind in this context).
Thanks for working on this.
Thanks Jeff: Another insightful article.
Folks at the FBI fully understand that law enforcement agencies are not reporting crime correctly. With police staffing levels being low and with confusion over the NIBRS, there are going to be errors.
But misreporting has been going on long before the NIBRS. The FBI offers months and times of crime that are clearly inaccurate because agencies are not providing the information thus defaulting to inexact times and months.
On average, U.S. residents experienced approximately 246,900 hate crime victimizations each year between 2005 and 2019 per the National Crime Victimization Survey versus 11,634 reported by the FBI in 2022. Yet we are making policy and having a public discussion over the wrong numbers.
The rate of crime reporting for cyber crimes or juvenile crimes or retail theft is ridiculously low let alone property or violent crimes.
I'm beginning to think that, beyond homicides, "reported" crime statistics are wildly inaccurate for an endless number of reasons. I do not blame the FBI. I believe that the problem lies with individual agencies and state reporting systems yet no one wants to take this on because it's essentially a voluntary system as to participation.
I had a two hour conversation with a reporter from USA Today partially discussing FBI statistics. He was quite surprised by the realities of "reported" crime data.
There doesn't seem to be a solution but "reported" crimes need to come with a disclosure. I believe that anything over or under ten percent needs to be used cautiously.
Best, Len.