Federal officials should act to provide more timely, accurate data on crime trends, two leading experts told a national conference on Tuesday. So said John Roman of NORC at the University of Chicago and Thomas Abt of the University of Maryland Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction. Roman, who also chairs the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) Crime Trends Working Group, and Abt spoke on a keynote panel at the National Criminal Justice Association's annual Forum on Criminal Justice, which was held this year in Washington, D.C. The association is marking its 50th anniversary. Roman and Abt discussed data emanating from different sources in recent years, including the FBI, the main Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, and private organizations such as the Council on Criminal Justice. T
The different reports agree that reported violent crime has decreased since 2020, the first year of the pandemic, but current nationwide data are lacking. CCJ and the Major Cities Police Chiefs have issued numbers based on reports from several dozen police departments, but the FBI report for 2023, collecting data from more than 10,000 agencies, is not due until later this year. "It's an opportunity for leadership," said Abt, noting that the public deserves up-to-date information to analyze crime trends, especially in an election year. Roman cited a "lack of interagency coordination" among federal entities charged with collecting crime data. The Council on Criminal Justice has released a report of data from 39 cities through June, indicating that violent crime has generally dropped to pre-pandemic levels.
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