President Biden and Vice President Harris also passed the most significant gun reform law in almost 30 years. And now, we’re seeing the results of that action. Violent crime has plunged to its lowest ever in almost 50 years.
And today, Axios reported, “Ne- — new preliminary data from major U.S. cities shows that homicides were down during the first full six months of President Biden’s last year in office — more than 70 percent in some places — compared to the same time of President Trump’s — Trump’s last year.”
The historic declines in crime mean that America is safer, and we remain focused on building on this progress. . . .
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Chair of the Council of Economics Advisers Jared Bernstein,” The White House, August 14, 2024. UPDATED
“The false message of the RNC was that [illegal immigration] was leading to an increase in crime.” Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg claimed on Fox News Sunday. “If you look this up at home, you will know that crime went down under Biden and crime went up under Trump. Why would America want to go back to the higher crime we experienced under Donald Trump?”
“And make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump,” Democrat Governor Tim Walz warned in his first speech as Kamala Harris’ running mate. “That’s not even counting the crimes he committed. You know, some of us, some of us are, some of us, some of us in here are old enough to remember”
“It’s no accident that violent crime is near a record 50-year low,” President Biden claimed.
In fact, the opposite is true: between 2016 and 2020, violent crime fell by 17% under Trump and soared by 43% under Biden between 2020 and 2022. Even if you take the starting period for Biden as 2019 because the numbers may have been artificially depressed during COVID, violent crime rose by 12%. Using 2019 as the end point for Trump, would imply a 6.6% increase over 2016, about half the increase under Biden. The problem is people don’t understand the difference between the number of crimes reported to police and the total number of crimes. However, as we have pointed out, there are also problems with the FBI’s measure of reported crimes (see here, here, and here).
There are two measures of crime. The FBI’s NIBRS counts the number of crimes reported to police yearly. The Bureau of Justice Statistics uses its National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to ask about 240,000 people each year whether they have been victims of crime to measure reported and unreported crime. Since 2020, these two measures have been highly negatively correlated. The FBI has been finding fewer instances of crime, but people are simultaneously answering in greater numbers that they have been victims.

The National Crime Victimization Survey data is available here.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cv22.pdf
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv21.pdf
https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/cv20.pdf
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv17.pdf
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv16re.pdf
0 Comments