The FBI's Quarterly Data Shows Declining Crime Through June

It's probably still overstating the decline by quite a bit though.

The FBI released data for the first six months of 2024 today which shows a sizable decline in crime persists through midyear, but it’s probably still overstating the trend by a healthy amount. Around 82 percent of the US population was covered by an agency reporting quarterly data to the FBI.

Sure, there was no Los Angeles and no Chicago and no New Orleans and no Milwaukee, but murder and violent crime is down in all of those places. Just because a place isn’t included doesn’t mean the the overall trend is wrong.

Remember, quarterly reporting is a new product from the FBI and we’re still learning about it. The year-end estimates that the FBI publishes under the Crime in the United States branding is just that — an estimate. It takes data from thousands of agencies and fills in the gap of what is missing with an informed estimation procedure.

The quarterly data, by contrast, is simply a recitation of what is reported to the FBI for that period. The problem is that agencies still have time to fix potential reporting errors and the errors are prone to be more impactful earlier in the year when there are fewer offenses reported overall and agencies have more time to fix problems. That means the fourth quarter reports are probably going to be significantly more accurate than the first and second quarter reports.

The quarterly data alone, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt though the grain should shrink as the year goes on. The quarterly data combined with other data reporting streams such as the Gun Violence Archive, the Real-Time Crime Index, and NORC’s Live Crime Tracker should produce an accurate picture of crime nationally.

Comparing the FBI’s quarterly data to the RTCI’s data through June shows a roughly 5 percent overstatement of each trend. My instinct is to add 5 or 6 percentage points to each crime type when considering where we really are.

That said, the second quarter report clearly points to the US crime trends in 2024 even taking the overstating declines into account. Murder is down at the fastest rate ever recorded, easily eclipsing 2023’s previous record decline. Violent crime is down a fair amount — 4 or 5 percent — and will likely be the lowest reported violent crime rate since 1969 considering that 2023’s violent crime rate was virtually tied with 2014 for that honor. And property crime is down a ton thanks to the massive decline in motor vehicle theft following several years of huge increases.

Those are the contours of reported crime in America in 2024. The second quarter data is undoubtedly overstating the trend, but that does not make the trend inaccurate. Moreover, the quarterly data is overstating the trend in a predictable manner which hopefully helps to set proper expectations for what we’ll see when the year is done.