The violent crime rate in the U.S. as reported by victims was roughly the same last year as in 2022, the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reported on Thursday. Last year, the rate of nonfatal violent victimization was 22.5 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older, similar to the 2022 rate of 23.5. . Violent victimization includes rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault. Because the survey is based on interviewing a representative sample of Americans on whether they were crime victims in the previous year, it does not include homicides. So many crimes go unreported to police that the survey estimated 6.4 million violent victimizations last year, but only about 800,000 were reported to the FBI by local police agencies in 2022.
Kevin Scott of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which oversees the survey, noted that the rate of violent victimization has declined since 1993. Scott said, "While the 2023 rate was higher than those in 2020 and 2021, it was not statistically different from the rate 5 years ago, in 2019.” If the category of simple assault is excluded, the rate of violent victimization for men decreased, from 9.5 per 1,000 persons in 2022 to 6.9 per 1,000 in 2023, while the rate for females did not change significantly. About 9% of violent victimizations involved a firearm, not significantly different from the percentage in 2022. In 2023, the rate of property victimization was 102.2 per 1,000 households, similar to 2022. However, the rate of property victimization in urban areas increased from 176.1 per 1,000 in 2022 to 192.3 per 1,000 in 2023. Property victimization includes burglary or trespassing, motor vehicle theft, and other types of household theft. Only 42 percent of robbery victimizations were reported last year, compared with 64 percent in 2022. The percentage of motor vehicle thefts reported to police also decreased, from 81% in 2022 to 72% in 2023.