1. Timeliness
The 9-to-10-month lag in the release of comprehensive annual data on crimes reported to police limits the value of the data to law enforcement agencies, policymakers, the public, and the media. The delay has become more problematic in recent years as the internet, social media, and other technologies permit the rapid spread of new types of crime.
Timely data are essential to meet the demands of policymakers and members of the media who want real-time information, particularly during periods when crime rates are changing rapidly.
Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS) have been published annually for decades. The UCR and NCVS reports are typically published in September or October and present information on crime during the previous year, although the two systems do not have identical periods of coverage.6 The FBI recently began to release limited quarterly crime statistics from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) through the agency’s Crime Data Explorer; however, media outlets and policymakers remain cued to the more comprehensive annual reports.
The 9-to-10-month lag in the release of comprehensive UCR data on crimes reported to the police limits the value of the data to law enforcement agencies, policymakers, members of the media, and the public. This has become more problematic in recent years as the internet, social media, and other technologies permit the rapid spread of new types of crime. In 2021, for example, a viral video showed viewers how to steal Kia and Hyundai model cars quickly and easily, resulting in an immediate and dramatic rise in thefts of these vehicles in Wisconsin and Colorado. Data indicate that claims and losses in Wisconsin were more than 30 times higher in 2021 than in 2019, and more than 10 times higher in Colorado over the same time period.7 The rapid rise of Kia and Hyundai thefts in the wake of the video has been most evident in Milwaukee, WI, often cited as the epicenter of the trend. In August 2021, for example, Kia and Hyundai thefts comprised nearly three-quarters (73%) of all reported vehicle thefts in Milwaukee (Figure 1)8.
At the time Kia and Hyundai thefts were surging in the summer of 2021, national data on the crime were only available through 2019. Given the age of the data, the national numbers were of little help as decision-makers sought to respond to the surge in motor vehicle thefts and develop effective changes to policy and practice in a rapidly changing environment. In the absence of a near real-time crime surveillance system, similar to those used in the public health sector, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish a crisis (like the homicide spike9 in 2020, or the Kia and Hyundai vehicle theft spike in 2021) from what may not be a crisis (including conflicting narratives on shoplifting),10 or to determine whether any such crisis is local or national in scope. The intervening information vacuum during periods of extreme flux provides an opportunity for anecdotal evidence and political rhetoric, rather than data, to steer the national narrative on crime, and the resulting policies and practices are likely to be piecemeal at best.
Nongovernmental organizations have tried to fill the void by collecting and releasing timely data from relatively small samples of law enforcement agencies from which data are available. The Major Cities Chiefs Association publishes a survey of violent crime reports in about 70 American and nine Canadian cities; reflecting the desire for more timely data, the survey recently became quarterly.11 A private firm, AH Datalytics, scrapes homicide data from more than 200 cities to generate a “murder dashboard” that updates the most recent numbers available, often within days or a few weeks of new incidents.12 Since crime patterns began shifting early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Council on Criminal Justice has been producing periodic reports on crime trends in about three dozen cities that provide monthly incident-level data on 10 to 12 types of violent and property crimes.13 In May 2024, NORC at the University of Chicago launched the Live Crime Tracker,14 which scrapes and reports law enforcement agency website data from 56 cities on all serious crimes (e.g., homicide, rape, robbery, burglary, simple and aggravated assault, larceny, and motor vehicle theft) in real time.
While these nongovernmental efforts help paint a timelier picture of national crime trends, they are no substitute for official government figures that are national in scope.
