Sid Salter
- Columnist Sid Salter says regardless the source of crime data, the nation perceives crime as a top-shelf issue.
On the stump and in the presidential campaign ad wars, crime remains a hot topic election-year rhetoric on crime doesn’t exactly match the numbers in federal crime data. And to no one’s surprise, both Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris have bent crime data numbers to fit their campaign narratives.
The most recent crime data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows that violent crime and property crime dropped in the U.S. in 2023 after rising during the pandemic years. The FBI’s latest national crime report shows murders and intentional manslaughters were down 11.6 % while property crime was down 2.4%. Overall, the FBI reports crime down 3%.
Stateline, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, reports in an examination by criminal justice journalist Amanda Hernandez that the presidential campaign reflects narrative from competing data sets.
Violent crime has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential race, with former President Donald Trump claiming that crime has been “through the roof” under the Biden administration.
Last week, Hernandez wrote: “On the campaign trail, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has cited findings from a different source — the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey — to argue that crime is out of control.
“While the FBI’s data reflects only crimes reported to the police, the victimization survey is based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and includes both reported and unreported crimes. Interviewees are asked whether they reported the crime to the police. But the survey does not include murder data and only tracks crimes against individuals aged 12 and older.
“The victimization survey, released in mid-September, shows that the violent crime victimization rate rose from 16.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 22.5 per 1,000 in 2023. The report also notes that the 2023 rate is statistically similar to the rate in 2019, when Trump was in office.”
Trump’s crime narrative leans heavily on the Bureau of Justice data while the Harris campaign leans on data from the FBI report. To complicate matters, both data sets are considered dependable and accurate – but neither data set tells the whole story.
Harris, the former California district attorney and state attorney general, has framed her stance on criminal justice as that of a “progressive prosecutor” who offers voters a “smart on crime” agenda. She drew criticism from many in her party for failing to seek the death penalty for a defendant in the murder of a police officer in 2004.
Less known was the Harris record on drug crime and truancy – including action against parents who let their children skip or miss school – while a prosecutor. As vice president, Harris has pushed police reform and programs to combat gun violence.
As president, Trump held a “tough on crime” stance characterized by his tweets during the 2020 protests in Minnesota in the wake of the death of George Floyd in which he said, in part: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The phrase was not original to Trump. In 1967, Miami Police Chief Walter Headly invoked the same phrase during public hearings on race riots in the Florida city.
Less known was Trump’s record on criminal justice reforms, including The First Step Act, which saw 4,500 people released or who had their prison terms shortened since Trump signed the significant criminal justice reform legislation into law in December of 2018. Republicans and many Democrats hailed it as landmark legislation.
Regardless the source of crime data, the nation perceives crime as a top-shelf issue. A March Gallup poll showed that 79 % of Americans were concerned more about crime than about the economy, illegal immigration or the environment.
For the record, the FBI report for Mississippi shows violent crime down in Mississippi and below the national average in 2023.
Sid Salter
