FBI Discreetly Revises Its Violent Crime Statistics
After initially claiming a decline, the FBI has discreetly updated its 2022 violent crime data to reflect a 4.5% increase. Since the Bureau has not offered an explanation, questions have been raised concerning the transparency and quality of its data.
The FBI added nearly 80,000 new violent crimes, including thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults, to its 2022 violent crime data, which had previously shown a 2.1% decline.
With the exception of a mysterious notation on its website that RealClearInvestigations found, the change went mostly overlooked as the Bureau did not publicly acknowledge the substantial alteration in its September 2024 press release.
Concerns about the FBI's lack of transparency have been raised by researchers; experts have referred to the scope of the modification as unprecedented and questioned the validity of the Bureau's crime reporting practices, which mostly rely on estimates rather than reported instances.
The FBI has made major changes to the 2022 violent crime numbers it issued last year, according to RealClearInvestigations. In order to refute Republican allegations of increased crime under President Joe Biden, Democrats immediately embraced the Bureau's initial report showing a 2.1% drop in violent crime for 2022. But according to the FBI's recently updated data, violent crime increased by 4.5% in the same year. More than 80,000 violent offenses, including almost 1,700 more killings, are added in this edition.
Since the FBI did not acknowledge the alteration in a public statement or news release, the change was mainly overlooked. RealClearInvestigations found it after spotting an ambiguous mention of the updated numbers on the FBI's website. Researchers have expressed worries about the lack of transparency, with experts doubting the validity of the Bureau's procedures for gathering and reporting data.
Professor Carl Moody of the College of William & Mary said that such significant changes were exceptional, pointing out that such changes had been made sparsely in prior years. He has urged the FBI to provide an explanation for the notable alterations, as have other scholars. Several requests for comment have not received a response from the Bureau.
Major crime categories like robbery, violent assault, and rape have seen significant rises as a result of the adjustments. For instance, compared to earlier reports, the updated data shows nearly 33,000 more robberies and 7,780 more rapes. The FBI's earlier assertion that violent crime was on the decline was called into question by these new statistics.
Critics contend that the change erodes public confidence in FBI crime statistics, which are frequently utilized by the media and politicians to influence public safety narratives. The issue is exacerbated by the FBI's reliance on estimations rather than actual reported instances, according to Jeffrey Anderson, the former head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Anderson underlined that the public has to be better informed about this data, particularly when there are major modifications.
Additional concerns regarding the FBI's present numbers are brought up by the agency's updated 2022 data. The reported decline in violent crime for 2023 would have been less substantial without this modification, falling from 3.5% to 1.6%. Under the Biden administration, other agencies have also come under fire for releasing erroneous data, and this disparity adds to the increased scrutiny of government-reported statistics.
This information was made public as the Biden-Harris administration keeps emphasizing what it says are historically low crime rates. In a statement released by the White House in September, Vice President Kamala Harris praised the alleged "historic declines in crime."
Visit http://SupportDiamondandSilk.com to Become a Monthly Supporter.
Stay Connected to Diamond and Silk: Chatdit, FrankSpeech, TruthSocial, Rumble, X.com and VOCL
