In Brief:
- Always a major concern of policymakers, crime has become more controversial during an election year due to conflicting opinions about crime rates.
- FBI data shows crime trending down in 2023, but doesn't reflect changes since then.
- A new online resource offers a month-to-month view of trends.
The FBI has just released estimates of criminal offenses in 2023, drawing on data from law enforcement agencies across the country. Crime rates decreased in virtually every category between 2022 and 2023, with the exception of motor vehicle theft. Violent crime went down an estimated 3 percent; murder and manslaughter almost 12.
This national accounting smooths out variations from community to community — it can’t be taken to mean that crime isn’t rising anywhere. It’s a fact-check on claims that crime has gone "through the roof" throughout the U.S. in recent years, but what it doesn’t show is what’s been happening in 2024. The FBI crime data has always had a lag time, which means information that could potentially drive decisions about response to crime doesn't reflect the real-time problems in communities.
A group of data analysts have created an open-source tool to close this time lag, which has long been an obstacle for those who analyze and respond to crime trends. The Real-Time Crime Index (RTCI) shows monthly changes in crime numbers from more than 350 agencies, including nearly every one of the 25 largest cities in the country.
Users can view crimes by month or as a “rolling sum” of the number of offenses in the past 12 months as of that point in time. They can also see national trends or trends in communities whose data is included. Not as many jurisdictions are represented as in the FBI's tracking, but the RTCI wasn't made public until the analysts behind it were confident it contained enough data to reflect national trends.
The RTCI was built by AH Datalytics and launched in September. It was created as a public service, provided to anyone who wants to use it at no cost, says Jeff Asher, AH Datalytics’ co-founder. Asher has been an analyst for federal intelligence and defense agencies as well as local law enforcement, and has become a commentator on crime statistics in national media.
“We were frustrated that the U.S. publishes data on the number of hogs slaughtered each day with a one day lag but national crime stats only annually, 9 months later,” tweeted John Arnold, founder of Arnold Ventures, which supported Asher's team in creating RTCI.
Big Spends, Big Consequences
Republican Kentucky Sen. Whitney Westerfield read about plans for the RTCI and contacted Asher. When it was ready to launch, he invited Asher to his state to present it to state officials.
"Jails and policing are huge budget line items, and they have huge impact on the immediate population and the next generation of a jurisdiction's population," Westerfield says. Misinformed decisions can do harm, he says. “This index provides an opportunity for policy makers to make a better educated guess."
Westerfield has chaired the Senate judiciary committee for 12 years. In 2015, he lost the Attorney General race to Democrat Andy Beshear by just 0.2 percent. People from both parties can have knee-jerk reactions to statements about crime rates on cable news or social media, he says. Even if what is reported is not intentional misinformation, it’s a given that it’s not current.
"[Legislators] might be acting on data that is three- or four-year-old criminal justice data when they are making sweeping policy decisions," Westerfield says, noting that some legislatures only meet every other year.
Shortening the time lag between crime reports will be a welcome step forward, but Westerfield also wants more discussion about what’s causing crime. At one point, Kentucky was incarcerating large numbers of young people, but the vast majority were in custody because of truancy.
“We're reacting to the behavior without proactively responding to the environment that led to the behavior,” Westerfield says. Similar situations are playing out in red, blue and purple states, he says. Data that increases awareness of what is unfolding in real time can bring attention to problem areas where better understanding of causation is most urgent.
Proof of Concept
The release of 2023 FBI crime statistics provided a big test for the data set that RTCI already contains. “When we looked at our data from 2023 compared to theirs, we were pretty much spot on,” says Katie Schwipps, senior analyst for the RTCI. “You might be off by a percentage point here or there, but the overall trends that we’re showing are representative of the national trends.”
RTCI shows violent crime continuing to downtrend nationally in 2024, as did property crime and even motor vehicle thefts.
A graph created with data from the Real-Time Crime Index shows a national trend that is consistent with what is reflected in the FBI's larger data set. It includes 2024 numbers, which continue to trend downward.
Asher's target is to grow the number of participating agencies to 500 or more. There are 800 police departments in the U.S. that serve populations of 50,000 or larger. In a post introducing the RTCI, Asher says that having data from 500 or more of them “should be predictive of the national trend.”
The RTCI allows users to sort its data set by population size in a way that mirrors FBI data, and trends that show up when this is done also match those in FBI data, says Dave Hatten, RTCI’s Program Manager. “Although it’s a drastically smaller size, we’ve been able to prove a proof of concept, that the trends are clear and they track what’s actually happening,” Hatten says.
Aside from the fact that every jurisdiction in the country is not represented, there are limitations to what RTCI can reveal. The same data is not available from every agency, Hatten says. Not all collect and count it in the same way. (This is a factor in any compilation of crime statistics.)
“We don’t suggest comparing between agencies,” Hatten says. For example, Washington, D.C., only counts “aggravated assaults” that involve a gun. Another jurisdiction might not make that distinction.
Delay Is the Problem
Early in the project, Schwipps says, one question that came up was who the ideal users would be. “We had a lot of trouble narrowing it down, because we think it’s very useful for a wide variety of people.” These include police departments, city governments, journalists, researchers, academics and state and federal policymakers.
Any of the data in the RTCI can be downloaded, including the data received from participating agencies before AH Datalytics filters it to be compatible with the dashboard. Users sort and download data by source. Data is refreshed every 45 days, which includes the time necessary to get every new month of data ready for import.
Delayed data is the problem for those attempting to get a handle on crime trends, not bad data, Schwipps says. “If there are trends a government is wanting to address, but they can’t even see those trends for 18 months, it makes it really difficult for them to see whether their policy changes are having an impact.”
