Crime has decreased since Trump’s presidency, but he insists otherwise.

Former President Donald Trump visited Michigan on Tuesday as part of his efforts to overshadow the Democratic National Convention. His appearance was marked by accusations that Vice President Kamala Harris has been weak on crime.

At first glance, one might wonder why Trump, a convicted felon, would target a former prosecutor like Harris on such an issue. However, Trump pointed to select statistics and tapped into a national sentiment that perceives crime as a more significant problem than the data may suggest.

To clarify the background, crime rates in the United States have been on a general decline since the early 1990s. An uptick in violent crime, particularly murder, occurred in 2020 during Trump’s last year in office, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, crime rates began to fall again after Trump left office, a fact he seems to ignore in his dramatic claims that the country is facing overwhelming lawlessness.

During his speech, Trump claimed that under Harris’s vice presidency, there was a “43% increase in violent crime.” The statistics he cited were derived from a Bureau of Justice Statistics report which indicated a 42% increase in nonfatal violent crime for the year 2022. Notably, this report acknowledged that nonfatal violent crime had recently hit a 30-year low during President Joe Biden’s first year.

Predictably, Trump omitted this important context in his discourse.

In the realm of crime statistics, there are two primary methods for data collection in the United States. The FBI gathers reports from local law enforcement agencies, while the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts annual surveys of about 240,000 people across the nation. In recent remarks, Trump leaned heavily on the survey data, likely because the FBI results contradict his narrative of a country engulfed in crime.

The FBI’s findings indicate a downward trend in crime rates for 2022, with further data expected to be released soon. When Trump’s claims were countered by these reports, his response was to criticize the FBI’s findings as “fake numbers,” a claim motivated by changes in the agency’s reporting methodology initiated in 2021.

Ames Grawert, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center For Justice, noted the FBI’s attempts to address reporting issues that arose during the pandemic. He emphasized that although there was a temporary disruption in data collection, the murder rate remains a reliable metric since it is consistently reported. Grawert asserted that indications pointed toward a significant decrease in violent crime for 2023 and 2024, thereby undermining Trump’s assertions made in Michigan.

While Trump paints a grim picture, he fails to let factual trends disrupt his narrative. During his speech, he suggested that Americans purchasing everyday items like bread are at risk of violent crime.

This rhetoric taps into a longstanding view that the national crime rate is worse than the actual statistics reflect, a belief that persists even among those who do not consider crime a significant threat in their own communities.

According to John Gramlich from the Pew Research Center, this anxiety about crime has historically been stronger in Republicans but has recently become a bipartisan concern, contradicting the evidence of declining crime rates. He noted that a lag in data reporting can create an information void, which is often filled with misperceptions and fears, especially during election cycles.

This backdrop set the stage for Trump’s dire warnings in Michigan, where he claimed that Harris would usher in “crime, chaos, destruction, and death” if she were elected president. Following Biden’s exit from the presidential race and endorsement of Harris, Trump’s earlier lead appears to be diminishing, prompting him to ramp up his fear-mongering rhetoric.

While Trump governed during a spike in crime rates in 2020, he avoids taking any responsibility for it. As he attempts to attribute a narrow piece of statistics to Harris amid her rising popularity, it leads to a larger question: Do Americans feel unsafe doing basic activities, such as grocery shopping? The answer is likely that many feel secure, reflecting a general sentiment that contradicts Trump’s alarming claims.

Source: USA Today