The 2024 National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is out and the increase in violent was even worse than seen during the first three years of Biden’s administration. During the first three years, the increase in felonious violent crime was 55%. Now during the his whole term the increase was 59%. That contrasts sharply with the 15% drop in violent crime during Trump’s first term. Biden saw a 67% increase in rapes/sexual assault, 38% increase in robbery, and a 62% increase in aggregated assault. The 59% increase in the largest four year increase on record (the largest previous increase was 42.6% between 2010 and 2014).
Thus, while reported violent crime, according to the FBI’s UCR, fell by 8% during the Biden administration, total violent from the NCVS soared by 59%.
Even if you compared the 2024 numbers to those in 2019 instead of 2020, violent crime increased by 22%, and it is the second largest five year increase on record (there was a 33% increase from 2009 to 2014).
At the same time that crime is increasing, the rate that crimes are being reported to police is down substantially. Over the ten years from 2010 to 2019, 63.3% of violent crimes were reported to police, but it fell to just 48.8% during the last three years. One factor that drives whether people report crime to the police is whether people think that the criminals will be caught and punished, but as the arrest rate plummeted, it is understandable that people would think that is less likely, so that is one reason that total violent crime soared even as reported violent crime went down some.
At the same time, arrests as a percentage of total violent crime has plummeted. Over the ten years from 2010 to 2019, 26.5% of violent crimes resulted in an arrest, but it fell to just 16.6% during the last three years (this compares the FBI data on reported crime to the number of crimes that people say occur in the NCVS). A similar pattern exists for property crime. Over the ten years from 2010 to 2019, 9.3% of property crimes resulted in an arrest, but it fell to just 5.5% during the last three years. The property crime arrest data are not available for 2021. For both the violent and property crime arrest rate data, are lower in the years from 2022 to 2024 than any of the other years since 2010.
Part of the problem, as we have pointed out many other times (for example here), is that many people in the NCVS think that calling up 911 counts as reporting a crime, but crimes only get included in the FBI data when a police reports is taken. So we measure percent of crimes reported this way: FBI reports/NCVS crime number.
The increase in violent crime was worse in suburban areas (64% compared to a 53% increase in urban areas). Data for 2019 and 2020 is available here.
Here is the regional breakdown for 2019 to 2024 and 2020 to 2024.
The Excel file with the NCVS data is available here. The FBI crime data from 2005 to 2024 is available here.
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