Millions Of Crimes Are Not Included In FBI Yearly Reports

Highlights

This article is available as a podcast on YouTube.

Understanding crime numbers and rates in America isn’t easy. Per FBI data, crime is down. Per the USDOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey, violent crime increases are at record highs. 

Do FBI national crime reports include most crimes that occur? The answer is no. The vast majority of crimes are not reported to the police.

Do FBI national crime reports include all reported crimes to law enforcement in their national publications? The answer is no.  

Are there significant improvements in law enforcement agency participation in the FBI’s 
“new” National Incident-Based Reporting System? The answer is yes. The emphasis is qualitative, not quantitative. 

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention and Statistics for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public Affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former police officer. Retired federal senior spokesperson.

Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Produced successful state anti-crime media campaigns.

Thirty-five years of directing award-winning (50+) public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed thousands of times by every national news outlet, often with a focus on crime statistics and research. Created the first state and federal podcasting series. Produced a unique and emulated style of government proactive public relations. 

Certificate of Advanced Study-The Johns Hopkins University. 

Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.

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Daily news summations on crime, violent crime, law enforcement, and the justice system are offered under “Google Crime News” in the banner of this website.

A comprehensive overview of crime for recent years is available at Violent and Property Crime Rates In The U.S. 

Quote

National Crime Data Has Always Been Flawed, Jeff Asher.

Sources

Most sources for this article are available in Violent and Property Crime Rates In The U.S.

Note

I spent decades interpreting federal crime data for audiences at the state and national levels. However, there are issues involving aspects of the National Incident-Based Reporting System from the FBI that I (and many others) find challenging to understand, the reason for this article. 

Background

Background on the FBI’s “new” National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is available here. It’s a major improvement in the delivery and analysis of crime in the United States. The Department of Justice has provided millions of dollars to help local law enforcement implement the NIBRS. It’s designed to collect more crime data and analyze it in a way that promotes a better understanding of crime trends. With a better understanding comes more strategic solutions. 

Please note that the Summary Reporting System (SRS) is the FBI’s old method of collecting crime numbers. Current reports combine the SRS and the NIBRS from the nation’s 19,000 law enforcement agencies. Participation by police agencies is voluntary. The FBI is continuing its SRS policy of only counting the most serious crimes, not all crimes collected for its yearly or quarterly crime reports.

This article addresses national crime data, not state or local crime statistics.

Introduction

This article started as a documentation of the improvements by the FBI in their “new” National Incident-Base Reporting System (NIBRS). It was meant to serve readers trying to understand national crime statistics. I envisioned a small article acknowledging those improvements but it turned into something different.

It became something different when the FBI stated that all crimes reported were not included in their national reports (covered below). The FBI only includes the most serious charge (the hierarchy rule). The FBI states that only ten percent of criminal incidents record more than one charge.

That means that there could be approximately 1.5 million violent and property crimes not included in FBI national reports based on one additional charge. That alone could significantly affect the results of crime being up or down.

The lack of inclusion of all crimes could be much higher based on a Harvard Law Review analysis and a report on shoplifting from The Council On Criminal Justice (below).

Article

Most reporters, politicians, and citizens simply want to know if crime increased or decreased. They refer to the FBI’s latest data based on reported crimes and that’s it. In their minds, there’s no need to go further.

Unfortunately, that’s a huge mistake; it doesn’t give us an adequate understanding of criminality for a variety of reasons.

I engaged in a series of email exchanges with the FBI regarding the status of the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), their improved method of collecting and offering crime data for the United States. There’s good news, more law enforcement agencies are participating than ever before which substantially improves our understanding of criminality because more information per incident is included.

The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System will be a dramatic improvement to our understanding of reported crime and the circumstances of the crime (including offender information). It greatly enhances our ability to understand reported crime. The FBI is starting to offer monthly and quarterly reports instead of waiting till the end of the year to release data. This is all good news “if” you understand what’s included.

I Split This Article Into Two Parts

This article addresses two issues:

Does the FBI record all crimes committed? Are there more unreported than reported crimes?

Does The FBI include all crimes it collects from law enforcement in its national reports?

A forthcoming article will include the encouraging advancements in law enforcement agency participation in the National Incident-Based Information System and what it means for an enhanced qualitative analysis.

Part One–Does FBI Data Provide Reliable Crime Numbers?

However, before delving into that exchange or the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, we must address the elephant in the room, are FBI crime statistics reliable? Do they provide an accurate account of crime in America? I’ll answer that question by saying:

We Are Dealing With Reported Crime–Not All Crime: Before continuing, please understand that we are not dealing with crime, we are addressing reported crime. There’s a huge difference. Historically, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program released a report called “Crime in the United States,” presenting national, state, and local crime data. It implies a record of all crime. It’s not.

Reporters and politicians will use this data to say that crime is up or down without understanding that reported crime is vastly different than all crime.

Trends: FBI crime data is reasonably good (not perfect) for national trends. For example, there is a big difference in FBI data suggesting that overall crime (especially homicides) is down while the USDOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey states that violent crime is at record highs for 2022 and 2023 (latest reports). 

Context: Per the FBI, homicides (and most crimes) are down throughout the country in recent years. Still, without noting preceding data which include significant increases in murders and aggravated assaults (50 percent in homicides and a 36 percent increase in aggravated assaults in major cities per one source), offering decreases in homicides (or other crimes) doesn’t provide a lot of context. Crime numbers always go up and down (often for reasons we can’t explain) and the drop in homicides (or other violent crimes) may be nothing more than a readjustment in trends (what researchers call a regression to the mean). The drop (per The Atlantic) may (or may not) have anything to do with actions taken by local law enforcement or additional government efforts.

Numbers: As to numbers, FBI crime data is a woeful undercount. The overwhelming amount of crime is not reported to law enforcement and the FBI. For example, approximately 80 percent of crimes are property events. According to the FBI’s partner in creating crime statistics, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 30 percent of that 80 percent of property crimes are reported to police. More examples are below.

Accuracy: Per the USDOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 45 percent of violent crimes are reported. Thirty percent of property crimes are reported to law enforcement. There are some categories (like identity theft) where 7 percent are reported.

This means that a five or ten percent increase via the FBI in violent or property crime could be a five or ten percent decrease because of the lack of reporting. We do not know for sure whether crime is up or down based on reported crimes for any given year, the reason we have the National Crime Victimization Survey to provide us with a more accurate assessment.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS): I’m old enough to remember the discussion within the media and criminological community decades ago about the unreliability of FBI crime statistics. When I became the senior specialist for crime prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse, the improvements offered through the National Crime Victimization Survey were thought NECESSARY to get an accurate gauge of crime in the US beyond homicides (you can’t interview dead people). The survey is a product of the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice.

The problem? No one seems to know about the 50-year-old NCVS and what it does. Per their data from 2022 and 2023 (latest reports from the USDOJ) there are huge increases in violent crime rates (approximately 44 percent) yet 90 percent of the crime discussion in the US omits any consideration of this data. To this day, the national media refuses even to consider the NCVS (which may be a partial reason why the media’s level of trust per polls is hitting rock bottom when you consider record fear of crime per Gallup).

Cities Do Not Report Accurate Crime Numbers

When I started my criminology studies, we examined Chicago and many other jurisdictions that were accused of cooking the books to make their crime numbers look better.  Whether done to bring down crime counts or simply by making mistakes, there are endless references to cities providing incorrect crime numbers. Columbus has been misreporting some crime stats since 2013. Here’s how it happened is one example of many.

Other Measures Of Crime: There are other measures of crime (i.e., Gallup, federal reports from the CDC, or reports on school crime) that need to be considered to get a comprehensive picture of crime. For example, Gallup reports a record fear of crime yet endless media reports are suggesting that Americans are being silly because reported crime is down via the FBI but violent crime is at record highs per the National Crime Victimization Survey.

Confused Yet?

I have discussions with crime reporters who have never heard of the National Crime Victimization Survey and they don’t have a clue as to the fact that the overwhelming percentage of all violent and property crimes are not reported to law enforcement. They know little about the FBI’s new National Incident-Based Reporting System, and what it means.

Examples Of Unreported Crime

As stated, the overwhelming percentage of violent and property crimes are not reported to law enforcement:

Crimes reported to law enforcement via the FBI involved approximately 15 million offenses compared to the 40 million plus figure via the National Crime Victimization Survey (including identity theft).

Question, do we base policy on a subset of crime or the totality of crime?

Per the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the USDOJ, 45 percent of violent crimes were reported in 2023. 30 percent of property crimes were reported (latest report).

74 percent of violent victimizations against juveniles were not reported to the police per the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and juvenile crime seems to be growing in many cities.

For identity theft, roughly 7 percent of incidents were reported per the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

There are 120 million porch package thefts in 2024, far more than all categories of property crime recorded by the FBI in 2023. Twenty-three percent of porch package thefts are reported to law enforcement.

About 12,000 hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI and approximately 250,000 yearly hate crime incidents were recorded by the Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey.

So it’s abundantly obvious that what the FBI reports is a dramatic undercount of criminal activity in the US.

That doesn’t mean that FBI data is invalid. If we have several years of reported crime increasing or decreasing, the trend can be accurate (although there is currently disagreement in the FBI’s and National Crime Victimization Survey’s data on violent crime.) Through the FBI’s new National Incident-Based Reporting System, the quality of reported data will improve considerably. Readers just need to understand the quirks.

Part Two–Does The FBI Include All Known Crime In Its National Crime Reports?

The short answer is “no.” 

I put most of my questions and answers from the FBI about its new National Incident-Based Reporting System in another article. For the moment, I’m going to focus on whether the FBI is offering all known crime data in its reports.

 

However, I assume that the FBI “is” counting more crimes through the National Incident-Based Reporting System and uses that data for individual (not national) crime reports. Again, the emphasis is on qualitative reports analyzing individual crimes which is good for our understanding of criminality.

 

Shoplifting

Report from the National Council on Criminal Justice:

“Two national sources of law enforcement data on reported shoplifting—both available from the FBI—show different trends. Statistics from the Summary Reporting System (SRS) suggest that reported shoplifting in 2023 was the same level as in 2019. However, rates from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), show that shoplifting was 93% higher in 2023 than it was in 2019.”

Again, it shows an evolving problem of interpreting a combined Summary Reporting System with the National Incident-Based Reporting System, the hierarchy rule of only reporting the most serious crime in national crime reports, and an array of additional considerations.