After a spike of homicides in 2020 and 2021, the rate of violent crimes, including homicide, in the US fell last year to pre-pandemic levels, even as other types of crime increased, data released this week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) show.
But experts say these findings should be viewed with caution, since much of it is based on incomplete data from local police departments.
The FBI data is based on voluntary reporting by individual law enforcement agencies, and last year, half of US police departments, including those in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York, failed to submit data for 2021.
In 2022, 83% of US law enforcement agencies submitted data to the federal government, which means that about 10% of the population is not represented in this data, according to the FBI. And while more localities are included in this year’s data release, researchers caution that department data can also be “patchy” because less than half of the nation’s violent crimes, like rapes and robberies, are reported to law enforcement, according to the Appeal.