I Didn’t Think Biden Affected Crime Rates. I Was Wrong.
When you look at the data, the president deserves some credit for the decline.
Almost every crime indicator is pointing in the right direction.
Source: EVAN VUCCI/AFP/Getty Images
The first-quarter US crime statistics released last week by the Federal Bureau of Investigation were a doozy, in a good way. Every single main crime category was down by double-digit percentages from the same period a year earlier. That followed on smaller, almost-across-the-board (auto theft was the lone exception) crime declines in the FBI’s preliminary data for 2023.
I included the caveat “FBI Says” in the chart headline because the agency’s crime statistics haven’t been super reliable lately. One issue has been a new crime-reporting system that many local law enforcement agencies took years to switch over to, although most have by now. Another is the lack of quality control apparent whenever one digs into the FBI’s data for individual police departments (and finds obviously incorrect information), which makes it hard to take the national numbers too seriously.