Highlights
Did the violent victimization rate “really” drop 22 percent in 2020?
It’s my opinion that these conclusions are incorrect based on the impact of COVID on data collection efforts. There are simply too many unexplainable findings; too many extraordinarily large decreases.
The data simply doesn’t make sense.
Author
Article
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) of the US Department of Justice states that the violent victimization rate dropped 22 percent in 2020, Criminal Victimization 2020.
This is the largest decrease in violence ever reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Violent crime rates fell by 15 percent in 2000.
This announcement is startling. Everyone expected BJS to report increasing violence based on FBI and many additional reports that violent crime increased considerably (see below).
Note
An overview of crime in the United States for recent years is available at US Crime Rates.
Complexity Of This Article
This is an immensely complex article to write. I wrote a note to the spokesperson for the Office of Justice Programs (the lead Department of Justice agency for research and funding) wishing them luck in explaining this data and their conclusion that violence decreased by record numbers instead of increasing.
I will address all of this as fact (what the report has to say) and opinion (why I believe that their survey data collection efforts were hampered by COVID).
Two USDOJ Methods Of Collecting Crime Data
The first thing to understand is that the Department of Justice collects crime data as incidents reported to law enforcement through the FBI and crimes as measured by a survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics through the National Crime Victimization Survey.
Most crime is not reported thus the need for a survey to get a complete picture of crime and characteristics. See the full report for an explanation.
What Criminal Victimization-2020 Says Via The National Crime Victimization Survey
The violent victimization rate declined from 21.0 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 2019 to 16.4 per 1,000 in 2020.
The number of violent crimes, excluding simple assault, fell from 2.0 million in 2019 to 1.6 million in 2020.
The number of burglary and trespassing victimizations declined from 2019 (2.2 million) to 2020 (1.7 million). Burglary declined 19 percent.
About 40% of violent victimizations and 33% of property victimizations were reported to police in 2020.
A smaller share of intimate partner victimizations were reported to police in 2020 (41%) than in 2019 (58%).
The rate of violent victimization against persons ages 12 to 17 declined 51% from 2019 to 2020.
From 2019 to 2020, the rates of violent and property victimization fell in suburban areas but did not change in urban and rural areas.
The number of firearm victimizations declined from 2019 (481,950) to 2020 (350,460).
The total number of assaults also declined from 2019 to 2020, driven by a decrease in both aggravated assaults (from 1.0 million victimizations to 812,000) and simple assaults (from 3.8 million victimizations to 3.0 million).
Violent victimizations, excluding simple assault, decreased from 2.0 million to 1.6 million.
There were no statistically significant changes in the number of victimizations involving rape or sexual assault or involving robbery between 2019 and 2020.
The rate of domestic violence (violent victimizations that were committed by current or former intimate partners or family members) was 3.1 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older in 2020, down from 4.2 per 1,000 in 2019.
Homicides As An Indicator Of Overall Violence
The Bureau of Justice Statistics does not collect data on murders because you can’t interview dead people. However, homicides have been used as a proxy for overall violent crime for decades and longer, especially before the FBI started to collect crime information in 1929.
Why The BJS Findings Are Confounding
The summation below provides context as to what we know regarding violence in 2020.
Increasing Violent Crime-2020
Per FBI final statistics released in September 2021, the number of homicides increased nearly 30% from 2019, the largest single-year increase the agency has recorded since it began tracking these crimes in the 1960s. There were more than 21,500 murders last year, a total not seen since the mid-1990s.
In 2020, violent crime was up 5.6 percent from the 2019 number. The estimated number of aggravated assault offenses rose 12.1 percent, and the volume of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter offenses increased 29.4 percent.
The estimated number of robbery offenses fell 9.3 percent and the estimated volume of rape (revised definition) offenses decreased 12.0 percent. Property crimes continued to decrease. Motor vehicle thefts rose 11.8 percent, US Crime Rates.
The New York Times: The U.S. murder rate rose a stunning 29% last year, new FBI data confirms. It’s the largest single-year increase since officials started keeping national statistics in 1960. The New York Times.
Major American cities saw a 33% increase in homicides last year as a pandemic swept across the country, millions of people joined protests against racial injustice and police brutality, and the economy collapsed under the weight of the pandemic — a crime surge that has continued into the first quarter of this year, Rising Urban Homicides-CNN.
The largest increase in homicides in 100 years per the Center For Disease Control, Record Rise in Homicides.
Some suggest that we are experiencing the fastest rise in murder rates in 2020 since the late 1960s, NY Post.
We have a tripling of violent crime per Gallup, endless media reports of vastly increasing urban violence in 2020-2021 after the lockdowns and riots, a rise in homicides and aggravated assaults in 2019 and 2020 per the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a considerable and recent rise in homicides, aggravated assaults and robberies after the lockdowns by the University of Missouri, and considerable increases in homicides and violence by COVID and Crime, US Crime Rates.
There is data indicating that violence continues to rise in 2021, US Crime Rates.
Examples Where The National Crime Victimization Data For 2020 Are Surprising
The violent victimization rate dropped 22 percent when the FBI reported increases and the nation was having a national discussion about growing violence. Fear of crime is at an all-time high. This is the largest decrease in violence ever reported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS).
The rate of violent victimization against persons ages 12 to 17 declined 51% from 2019 to 2020. Generally speaking, survey data records small percentage changes (based on larger numbers collected). A 51 percent reduction in any age group is not the norm. Additional categories of crime also fell by large numbers; burglaries declined 19 percent.
The number of firearm victimizations declined from 2019 (481,950) to 2020 (350,460) during a time when firearm purchases were exploding. The nation now addresses violence as “firearm-related violence” because of the perceived growth.
The rate of domestic violence is down considerably when COVID-related domestic violence incidents were reported by media as increasing substantially.
It’s Not The First Time That BJS and FBI Data Conflicts
There are endless examples of conflicting results between crimes reported to law enforcement and crimes recorded by a survey. If approximately 40 percent of violent crime and 30 percent of property crimes are reported to law enforcement, the National Crime Victimization Survey will record an immense number of additional crimes.
Some suggest that crimes reported to law enforcement are more serious victimizations (i.e., violence by a stranger with injury, a burglary with a high dollar value) compared to National Crime Victimization Survey using action-oriented wording to record all crimes.
For example, you and your brother could exchange insults while drinking and one hits the other with a beer bottle, an aggravated assault. Will you report it to law enforcement? Unlikely.
But the National Crime Victimization Survey will ask you if anyone hit you with an object over the last six months. Without naming the offender, you would say yes.
Explaining The COVID Connection
The Bureau of Justice Statistics collects its data through a combination of in-person and telephone surveys.
As to the pandemic, as the Bureau of Justice states in Criminal Victimization-2020, in a section titled “The Impact of COVID-19 on the National Crime Victimization Survey,
“Due to increasing risks related to COVID-19, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), in coordination with the U.S. Census Bureau, suspended all incoming sample interviews and shifted all returning sample interviews to telephone calls starting in mid-March 2020. In July 2020, modified personal visits resumed in some geographic areas for returning sample households…” “Interviews were primarily conducted over the phone through the end of 2020.”
“The household response rate dropped from an average of 71% during 2019 to 63% in May 2020, before rising to 72% in September 20201. Response rates remained steady in the last quarter of 2020, such that the overall unweighted household response rate was 67% in 2020.”
In other words, the process of collecting information, especially in-persons interviews, was interrupted by COVID.
“To address the impact of these modified field operations due to COVID-19, BJS, in collaboration with the U.S. Census Bureau, examined the 2020 data to determine what adjustments were needed to ensure comparability with past and future years of National Crime Victimization Survey data.
To inform this process, a series of simulations using 2019 National Crime Victimization Survey were developed to assess differences related to changes in the field operations. As a result of this analysis, several adjustments were applied to the 2020 NCVS data:
Weights for the incoming sample in the first and fourth quarters of 2020 were doubled to compensate for the suppressed incoming sample in the second and third quarters.
Household weights for the types of group quarters included in the NCVS were controlled to match historical values.
Household control weights were developed to weight household distributions by sample type.”
In other words, the process of collecting information was hampered by COVID to the point where statistical means (weights) were necessary to adjust the data to make sure that demographics or other factors did not interfere with the results.
Opinion-Summary
First, I’m not a statistician or methodologist. There are people who can provide a better explanation of the 2020 data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey than me.
But I have been interpreting federal crime data through the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse (senior specialist for the National Criminal Justice Reference Service) and the National Crime Prevention Council (director of information services) and other government positions for decades.
Second, I believe that COVID interfered with the usual data collection process as documented in Criminal Victimization 2020.
Third, COVID was immensely confusing in 2020, see American Journal of Managed Care for a timeline of related pandemic events. People reacted to issues during the pandemic differently than in normal times. Their behavior changed due to fear and uncertainty.
By April 2020, about half of the world’s population was under some form of lockdown, with more than 3.9 billion people in more than 90 countries or territories having been asked or ordered to stay at home by their governments. Although similar disease control measures have been used for hundreds of years, the scale seen in the 2020s is thought to be unprecedented, Wikipedia.
Fourth, per Gallup (February 2020), “Each year since 2017, 15% of U.S. adults have indicated they were victimized by crime in the past year. A subset of that, between 1% and 3%, have reported being the victim of a violent crime.” One percent of Americans were victimized by violent crime in 2016. That tripled to three percent in 2019. 2019 is the first year where violent crime reached three percent, Gallup. This was based on a national survey before COVID.
Fifth, doing survey research during COVID brings an array of difficulties per the World Health Organization, “Another limitation of the study (editor’s note-a specific COVID study) is that, while validated for other scales and well-grounded in robust behavioral research, the items have not been validated through a rigorous process for COVID-19 specifically. This is due only to the fact that we have never experienced this virus before and needs to be taken into account as a limitation in the interpretation of findings (emphasis added),” World Health Organization. I assume this would apply to all survey data during the pandemic.
Yet national surveys have been done throughout the pandemic by Gallup and a wide array of reputable organizations without methodological criticism, see Gallup’s Methodologies During the Pandemic.
Finally, there are an endless array of indicators from multiple established research organizations and the FBI documenting a rise in homicides and overall violence in 2020 and 2021, US Crime Rates.
I have no doubt that the Bureau of Justice Statistics had internal debates as to the data and how to present it. I believe they offered an honest appraisal of crime and the impacts of COVID.
Not releasing this data would have created a firestorm of criticism. I’m a supporter of data as recorded by the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. I believe that the Bureau of Justice Statistics had no choice but to provide current statistics, warts and all.
But it’s my opinion that stronger language should have been used to reflect the inconsistencies and uncertainties in data collection and results. We should wait for 2021 data (released in October of 2022) to get a more accurate picture of crime in the United States.
Advocates are going to have a field day “celebrating” the decrease in violence as indicators that reductions in incarceration and jail use via pretrial detention and fewer police officers per the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the embrace of other reformist policies did not increase violence. On the contrary, there was a massive decrease.
It’s my opinion that these conclusions are incorrect based on the impact of COVID on data collection efforts. There are simply too many unexplainable findings; too many extraordinarily large decreases. The data simply doesn’t make sense.
See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.
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