The FBI has a big transparency problem. For a year, the media has been using the FBI’s estimates of reported crime to claim that crime has been falling. When the FBI released its numbers for 2023 in September 2024, it hid that it had revised its earlier crime data for 2021 and 2022, hiding the increase in 2022 and that there had been a net increase in crime over 2022 and 2023. Just days before an election in which crime has been a major issue, the FBI continues to hide the revisions.
On Thursday, House Oversight and Reform Committee Chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., demanded that the FBI explain why it hid this increase even as Democrats and the media have been citing the claimed drop to bolster their election chances.
In responses to reporters over the past couple of weeks, the FBI has claimed: “The FBI stands behind each of our Crime in the Nation publications. In 2022, the estimated violent crime rate decreased 1.7 percent from 2021.”
But the FBI’s revised numbers are clear. The FBI originally reported in October 2023 that the number of reported violent crimes fell from 1,253,716 in 2021 to 1,232,428 in 2022 — a 1.7 percent drop. The numbers released later, in September 2023, showed a rise from 1,197,930 in 2021 to 1,256,671 in 2022 — a 4.9 percent increase. That is a 6.6-point swing.
The FBI didn’t explain the reason for the changed numbers in 2022 in their report nor in their
