FBI underreported violent crime in 2023: report

An independent group of law enforcement as well as analysts have reported that the FBI underreported violent crimes in the US in 2023.  

The "Assessing America's Crime Crises: Trends, Causes, and Consequences," report's lead author is Mark Morgan, former assistant FBI director and acting commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration as well as Sean Kennedy, an attorney for the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, per Fox News.  

The report reveals that the US has been on the verge of a public safety crisis and an increasingly dysfunctional criminal justice system. Crime has risen in the US and is worse than statisticians have claimed even though preliminary data from the FBI has shown crime decreasing in the last few years, according to the report.  

Researchers in the report wrote, "To say crime is down is like descending from a tall peak and standing on a high bluff, saying you are closer to the ground – a true but misleading statement." 
 
According to a Gallup poll from March 2024, nearly 80 percent of Americans say they personally worry about crime and violence "a great deal" or a "fair amount." This is on the same level of worry as issues such as inflation as well as immigration.  

"Americans' support for greater law enforcement and stiffer criminal penalties has increased as polls show that the public believes crime has risen, and they feel less safe," the report added.  

Lead researcher Kennedy told Fox News Digital in an interview, "There's a series of caveats attached to the FBI data that the FBI doesn't make as clear as they should." 

He said that after the George Floyd riots in 2020, many police departments reclassified certain violent crimes and left behind a decades-old system to record criminal activity.  

"If you classify something as an aggravated assault, it's a violent crime or a felony, but if you classify it as a simple assault, it's then a misdemeanor and a non-violent crime," Kennedy said. "That is a world of difference when it comes to how the media is going to portray whether or not your department is fighting violent crime." 

Businesses and individuals have also appeared to show a reluctance to report criminal activity as well, leading to underreported numbers. Many business owners harbor the belief that the police will not respond in a prompt fashion if called to investigate a crime.  

"It is difficult to measure how much crime is underreported, often ‘downcharged,’ by law enforcement since the number of reported crimes reflects the categorizations of police agencies themselves," the report added.  

"FBI data is taken as gospel truth, when the FBI itself puts a series of footnotes all over their own data," Kennedy told Fox Digital.  

The report laid the blame on soft-on-crime initiatives. These have taken place in many blue cities that have been backed by Democratic lawmakers.