The Uniform Crime Reporting program (run by the FBI) is a collection of crime data from across the nation. There’s no policy here, no conclusions, no assessments, just data.

While the most useful report is the full annual report, mid-way through the year the UCR issues a preliminary report on the year so far. The Preliminary Semiannual Uniform  Crime Report, January – June 2013 has been published.

It’s not as detailed, nor as full of good broken-down statistics – you have to wait for the full annual report. But it’s still a good way to catch a glimpse of crime in the nation, especially violent crime and property crime.

Here’s the summary:

Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the nation reported a decrease of 5.4 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention for the first 6 months of 2013 when compared with figures reported for the same time in 2012. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The number of property crimes in the United States from January to June of 2013 decreased 5.4 percent when compared with data for the same time period in 2012. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime, but data for arson are not included in property crime totals. Figures for 2013 indicate that arson decreased 15.6 percent when compared to 2012 figures from the same time period.

Emphasis added.

Crime is going down. At least, according to data reported to the UCR.

It varies of course. Certain crimes changed more than others, certain regions of the USA had different amounts. Some places went up (e.g. Austin went down, Houston stayed about the same, Dallas went up). But on the whole and generally speaking, crime is down, according to this data.

While most of this data only gives percentages and only looks at 1st half 2012 vs. 1st half 2013, you can still see that despite the slight uptick in crime in 2012, the overall trend remains downward.

Or so it’s reported.

Here’s the thing. We can only look at this data as the data given. Is it Truth? Maybe, maybe not, but hopefully it is. I say this because it’s not unheard of for departments to mis-report (under or over), change classifications, or other such “accounting tricks” to help make statistics look right. There might be politics involved, budgets to consider, and who knows what other factors (e.g. consider how many crimes are never reported at all; very common in rape situations). So, we just have to say “this set of data, for whatever this set of data is worth, says this”.

However, I would like to think that any issues of “accounting tricks” or other matters that might skew data ultimately is a wash over time, or at least is constant enough year over year that while we can debate specific numbers, the trends will remain solid.

And so yes, I would like to believe this data: that crime is going down across the USA.

Why is it going down is of course going to be the subject of much debate. UCR gives no guidance here (which it shouldn’t). Everyone with an agenda will claim their pet politics are why things are down. I don’t think there’s any one single reason, and likely everyone’s pet politics probably had some sort of hand in the matter.

The main take-home?

The media loves to report on tragedy: murders, violence, mass shootings, corruption, scandal. Headlines, news feeds… it’s filled with reports of crime and violence. It gives you the perception that violent crime is on the rise.

Don’t believe the hype.