Reported crime in the U.S. has declined significantly over the last year, according to FBI data that contradict a widespread national perception that law-breaking and violence are on the rise, NBC News reports. A Gallup poll this month found that 77% of Americans believe crime rates are worsening, but they are mistaken. FBI data, which compare crime rates in the third quarter of 2023 to the same period last year, found that violent crime dropped 8%, while property crime fell 6.3% to what would be its lowest level since 1961, according to criminologist Jeff Asher, who analyzed the FBI numbers. Murder totals in 2023 fell at one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded, Asher found, and every category of major crime except auto theft declined. Yet 92% of Republicans, 78% of independents and 58% of Democrats believe crime is rising, the Gallup survey shows.. “I think we’ve been conditioned, and we have no way of countering the idea” that crime is rising,” Asher said. “It’s just an overwhelming number of news media stories and viral videos — I have to believe that social media is playing a role.”
Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966, Asher found, while Baltimore and St Louis are on track to post the fewest murders in each city in nearly a decade. A few cities, including Memphis and Washington, D.C., are still seeing increases in their murder rates, but they are outliers. The National Crime Victimization Survey, based on interviews asking people if they have been victimized, reported an small increase in violent crimes last year. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics published a report Tuesday that explains why the two main federal crime data sources sometimes produce seemingly conflicting results. It says they "may differ because the two data collections use different methods to measure an overlapping but nonidentical set of offenses."
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