When Donald Trump said during the debate that crime incidents have increased in the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, he was fact-checked. MAGA supporters on Wednesday said the FBI had quietly adjusted its 2022 figures in recent weeks — after the debate and new numbers showed Trump was right.
First reported by RealClearInvestigations (RCI), the new numbers show that the raw number of serious crime incidents — including murder, assault and rape — rose to 1,256,671 in 2022 from 1,197,930 in 2021, which is an increase of 4.9 percent.
In October 2023, the FBI issued a press release disclosing its 2022 national crime data, which found that “national violent crime decreased by approximately 1.7 percent in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates. “
“I looked at total violent crime data from 2004 to 2022,” College of William and Mary economics professor Carl Moody, who specializes in the study of crime, told RealClearInvestigations. “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020 there were small changes of less than one percentage point.
“The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without explanation, make it hard to trust FBI dataMoody added.
Elon Musk said even the latest FBI crime data “massively underestimates” the problem.
MAGA supporters claim Donald Trump is right about crime data in ABC News debate
Audits of FBI crime statistics reveal how much guesswork goes into even the “final” numbers that politicians often latch onto. The FBI doesn’t just count reported crimes. Instead, he offers estimates by extrapolating data from police departments that report only partial data for the year. The bureau also makes estimates for cities that do not report data. The FBI’s method of generating these estimates changes over time, and that affects the numbers they report, RCI said.
