Violent crime nationwide in 2023 declined from the previous year, according to new data released by the FBI on Monday.
The annual “Summary of Crime in the Nation” report said the nation saw an estimated 3 percent decrease in violent crime, based on data reported by state and local agencies covering 94 percent of the population.
Violent Crime
According to the report, murder and non-negligent manslaughter declined an estimated 11.6 percent, marking the largest single-year decline in 20 years.
Rape decreased by an estimated 9.4 percent, according to the FBI.
Aggravated assault declined an estimated 2.8 percent in 2023, while robbery showed an estimated decrease of 0.3 percent nationally.
Property Crime
U.S. property crime also shows a downward trend in 2023 from the previous year.
Burglary was down 7.6 percent, while larceny dropped 4.4 percent.
Although property crime was down overall, auto theft and hate crime incidents increased. Auto theft in the U.S. surged 12.6 percent in 2023 from the previous year, while hate crime incidents rose nearly 2 percent from 2022, according to the new data.
Reporting
The FBI’s annual report is based on data submitted by law enforcement agencies around the country. Notably, not all cities share their crime statistics with the FBI, although the agency said that 16,009 agencies participated in the hate crime collection for 2023, with a population coverage of 95.2 percent.
“Every city agency covering a population of 1 million or more inhabitants contributed a full 12 months of data” to the bureau’s crime reporting program,” the FBI said about the new report. Law enforcement agencies in those major municipalities showed a 7 percent decline in violent crime last year, according to the new data.
Limitations of FBI’s Data
The FBI collects data through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, and not all law enforcement agencies in the United States participate. The 2023 report is based on data from more than 16,000 agencies, or more than 85 percent of those agencies in the FBI’s program. The agencies included in the report protect nearly 316 million people across the United States. And every agency with at least 1 million people in its jurisdiction provided a full year of data to the FBI, according to the report.
“What you’re not seeing in that number are a lot of very small agencies,” said Brian Griffith, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division.
Other Crime Reports
That National Crime Victimization Survey, released earlier this month, shows that the violent crime victimization rate rose from about 16 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 22.5 in 2023. But the report notes that the rate last year was not statistically different from the rate in 2019 and the rate has declined dramatically overall since the 1990s.
The FBI’s report and the National Crime Victimization Survey use different methodologies and capture different things.
The victimization survey is conducted every year through interviews with about 240,000 people to determine whether they were victims of crimes. While the FBI’s data only includes crimes reported to police, the victimization survey also aims to capture crimes that were not.
Because it’s done through interviews with victims, the victimization survey doesn’t include data on murders. And it only captures crimes against people ages 12 and over.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.