‘Official reports are incomplete and rife with error’
Americans can be forgiven for suffering from whiplash regarding law and order.
In recent weeks the Biden administration and many news outlets, including USA Today and The Hill, have touted declines in violent crime statistics to argue that America is becoming a safer place.
“Right now, with 2023 figures and early 2024, the trends are all pointing down, in a positive direction,” Jeff Asher, whose New Orleans-based AH Datalytics is developing his own “Real-Time Crime Index,” told RealClearInvestigations.
Conservative outlets, including City Journal and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, assert that minor declines in headline grabbers like homicides fail to capture what is really happening in the U.S.
From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. had an average of 16,641 homicides a year. In 2021 and 2022, however, the country saw considerably more bloodshed, with an average of more than 22,000 annual homicides. Even if the 2023 number drops slightly, it will still represent a large increase over the recent past, before the pandemic and racial upheaval set in motion in 2020.