FBI: Violent crime takes dramatic fall

On Monday, June 10, 2024, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program released the Quarterly Uniform Crime Report (Q1), January-March, 2024 and the National Use-of-Force Data Collection Update, March 2024, on the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer (CDE) at https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov.

The Quarterly Uniform Crime Report (Q1), January-March, 2024, provides a preliminary look at crime trends for January through March 2024 compared to January through March 2023. A comparison of data from agencies that voluntarily submitted at least two or more common months of data for January through March 2023 and 2024 indicates reported violent crime decreased by 15.2 percent. Murder decreased by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery decreased by 17.8 percent, and aggravated assault decreased by 12.5 percent. Reported property crime also decreased by 15.1 percent.

National Use-of-Force Data Collection data was historically released on a quarterly basis, with each release building cumulatively throughout a calendar year. This cadence required the participation percentage to reset at zero every year. Beginning in January 2024, the participation percentage for the National Use-of-Force Data Collection will be determined using a rolling 12-month span. This change provides continuity in the participation percentage.

Information released from the National Use-of-Force Data Collection in June 2024 reflects data from 72 percent of the law enforcement population participating in the collection. The following is a breakdown of the types of use-of-force events reported from April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2024:

Death – 31.7 percent

Serious Bodily Injury – 55.3 percent

Discharge – 13.6 percent 

The number of incidents will be publicly released when 80 percent participation levels are met.

Schools are safer than ever, suspensions are up

U.S. schools are safer than they have ever been, reports The Crime Report. Crime in schools has declined during the past two decades, says the recently published federal report “Indicators of School Crime and Safety 2015." In 2014, students 12 to 18 experienced 33 victimizations per 1,000 students at school, a decline of 82 percent from 181 per 1,000 in 1992. Between the 1999-2000 and 2013-14 school years, the percentage of public school students who reported bullying occurred at school at least once per week decreased from 29 to 16 percent.

The bad news  writes the U.S. Education Department's David Esquith for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, is that large numbers of students are losing precious instructional time because they are suspended or expelled, especially African-American and Hispanic students.

To read more CLICK HERE

Mattmangino.com rated one of the top fifty criminal justice blogs in America

Top 50 Criminal Law Blogs

Criminal Justice Degree Schools have organized the best criminal law blogs on the Internet and ordered them based on popularity according to third party sources.* These blogs provide excellent commentary and insights into criminal law from the point of view of prosecutors, defense lawyers, and professors. You can also follow these blog authors on Twitter to stay up to date on the latest news in criminal law.

Rank	Blog	Page Authority	Linking Sites	Moz Rank	Page Rank	Domain Rank	Twitter Name
1	Sentencing Law and Policy	74	1,048	5.73	6	60	@SLandP
2	White Collar Crime Prof Blog	80	226	5.61	6	66	@whitecollarprof
3	CrimProf Blog	78	143	5.29	6	66	–
4	Lawrence Taylor’s DUI Blog	54	418	5.86	6	54	@taylorduilaw
5	The Federal Criminal Appeals Blog	55	747	5.25	4	50	–
6	A Public Defender	54	356	5.56	5	55	–
7	Defending People	57	450	5.70	4	55	@MarkWBennett
8	Crim Law	58	120	5.28	6	56	–
9	Crime & Consequences	52	271	5.24	5	53	–
10	The Wrongful Convictions Blog	49	236	5.23	5	51	@WrongConvBlog
11	Jacksonville Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog	45	150	5.99	5	47	@guntrustlawyer
12	Pardon Power	51	132	5.03	5	53	@PardonPower
13	Gamso – For the Defense	55	108	5.37	4	56	–
14	Underdog	45	241	5.10	4	56	@JonKatz5
15	Koehler Law	46	132	5.38	4	51	@jamisonkoehler
16	Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center	50	60	5.14	4	51	–
17	The Defense Rests	50	89	5.04	4	49	@PaulBKennedy
18	Crime in the Suites	45	76	4.97	4	53	–
19	Probable Cause	41	121	5.33	4	48	@RickHorowitz
20	Tempe Criminal Defense	43	58	5.30	4	46	@mattbrownaz
21	Life Sentences Blog	41	28	4.77	4	55	@MichaelOHear
22	Not Guilty	40	35	5.32	4	46	@mirriam71
23	Birmingham Criminal Defense Blog	40	84	4.81	4	48	@lawyerinalabama
24	Indefensible	49	44	4.51	4	46	@DFeige
25	Minnesota DWI Defense	41	104	4.77	4	45	@ChuckRamsay
26	Idaho Criminal Defense Blog	41	81	4.63	3	55	–
27	Nashville Criminal Law Report	40	75	4.82	4	43	@robmckinney
28	Pennsylvania DUI Blog	40	83	5.28	3	48	@JustinMcShane
29	Prosecutor’s Discretion	45	13	4.92	4	39	@ProsDiscretion
30	Boston Criminal Lawyer Blog	40	52	5.40	3	46	@AltmanandAltman
31	New York Criminal Defense Attorney Blog	35	12	5.06	4	45	@msiesel
32	Dallas Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog	41	81	4.94	3	48	@RobertSGuest
33	California Criminal Lawyer Blog	38	45	4.46	4	46	–
34	DUI News Blog	32	40	4.66	4	46	–
35	Matt Mangino	38	67	3.91	4	45	@MatthewTMangino

*The order of this list of top criminal law blogs was determined based on website metrics including Page Authority, number of websites linking to the blog, MozRank, Google PageRank, and Domain Rank. The data is taken from third party sources including Opensiteexplorer.org, Google, and Ahrefs.com.

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FBI: Violent Crime up in every category

Statistics released by the FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report revealed an overall increase in the number of violent crimes reported for the first six months of 2015 when compared with figures for the first six months of 2014. 

The report is based on information from 12,879 law enforcement agencies that submitted three to six months of comparable data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for the first six months of 2014 and 2015.

All of the offenses in the violent crime category—murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape (revised definition), rape (legacy definition), aggravated assault, and robbery—showed increases when data from the first six months of 2015 were compared with data from the first six months of 2014. 

The number of rapes (legacy definition) increased 9.6 percent, the number of murders increased 6.2 percent, aggravated assaults increased 2.3 percent, the number of rapes (revised definition) rose 1.1 percent, and robbery offenses were up 0.3 percent.

Violent crime increased in all but two city groupings. In cities with populations from 50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants, violent crime was down 0.3 percent, and in cities with 500,000 to 999,999 in population, violent crime decreased 0.1 percent. The largest increase in violent crime, 5.3 percent, was noted in cities with 250,000 to 499,999 in population.

Violent crime decreased 3.3 percent in non-metropolitan counties but rose slightly, 0.1 percent, in metropolitan counties.

Violent crime increased in all but one of the nation’s four regions. These crimes were down 3.2 percent in the Northeast but increased 5.6 percent in the West, followed by rises of 1.6 percent in the South and 1.4 percent in the Midwest.

To read more CLICK HERE

FBI rarely audits police reporting practices

In Milwaukee where thousands of violent assaults were not included in the crime rate since 2006, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel discover that the FBI rarely audits data reported by police.

The FBI's crime reporting program is considered the final word on crime trends in the United States.  However, the agency does little to insure the data is accurate. When the FBI does an audit, the reviews are too cursory to identify deep flaws.

In each of the past five years, FBI auditors have reviewed crime statistics at less than 1% of the roughly 17,000 departments that report data, a Journal Sentinel examination of FBI records has found. In all, they've audited as many as 652 police agencies during that time, or less than 4% of the total.

And a Journal Sentinel survey of police departments in the 30 largest U.S. cities found that nearly two-thirds have not been audited in the past five years.

Inaccurate crime data gives the public a false sense of the true level of crime.  False data can also be used by policymakers to give people the impression that crime fighting policies are working when in fact they are not.  Simply, false data gives the allusion that crime is done when it is actually increasing.

To read more: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7322025676604055811#editor/target=post;postID=8872442825088724676

Fudging the numbers: Crime reporting in NYC

New York City police officials are under scrutiny for manipulating crime reports to make it appear that crime rates continue to fall when in fact they are not falling. An anonymous survey of nearly 2,000 retired officers found that the manipulation of crime reports — downgrading crimes to lesser offenses and discouraging victims from filing complaints to make crime statistics look better — has long been part of the culture, according to the New York Times.

In the early 1990s violent crime was ravaging the NYC. According to Robert Zink of the NYC police union, the Compstat program was started when crime was at an all-time high, with over 2,000 homicides a year and countless felonies.

The program called for the immediate tracking of crime, swift deployment of police resources to problem areas and what Compstat’s creator Jack Maple called relentless follow-up.

The only problem is, it didn’t anticipate the “fudge factor.” That’s the characteristic that allows local commanders to make it look like crime has dropped when it has in fact increased.

In the early days, it was easy for a precinct commander to benefit from Compstat. He or she had crime-ridden neighborhoods where rudimentary policing techniques could bring crime down. Add the increased resources from the Safe Streets/Safe City program, and just paying attention to patterns and putting cops where crime was happening caused stats to fall dramatically. Then add to that the benefit of the gun control effort by the street-crime teams and we’ve made some real and honest impact on crime in New York City, reported Zink.

Of course, when you finally get a real handle on crime, you eventually hit a wall where you can’t push it down any more. Compstat does not recognize that wall so the commanders have to get “creative” to keep their numbers going down. Zink suggests, no mayor or police commissioner wants to be the one holding the bag when crime starts climbing, and no precinct commander wants to be the one to deliver the bad news that he or she doesn’t have enough cops to do the job.

So the fudging begins.  The police manipulate the reporting and citizens get a false impression of what is actually going on in their communities.  The problem is not unique to NYC, similar issues have plagued Baltimore, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Atlanta.

To read more: http://www.nycpba.org/publications/mag-04-summer/compstat.html

Survey: NYC police manipulating crime statistcs

An anonymous survey of nearly 2,000 retired New York City police officers found that the manipulation of crime reports - downgrading crimes to lesser offenses and discouraging victims from filing complaints to make crime statistics look better - has long been part of the department's culture, reported the New York Times.

"I think our survey clearly debunks the Police Department's rotten-apple theory," Eli B. Silverman, one of the criminologists, referring to arguments that very few officers manipulated crime statistics, told the Times. "This really demonstrates a rotten barrel."

Dr. Silverman, professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and John A. Eterno, a retired New York police captain, provided The New York Times with a nine-page summary of the survey's preliminary results. After reviewing a copy of the summary, the Police Department impugned the findings on Wednesday. Paul J. Browne, the department's chief spokesman, criticized the researchers' methodology and questioned the reliability of the findings.

Their survey is likely to rekindle the debate, which flared up earlier this year after The Village Voice detailed the case of Adrian Schoolcraft, an officer in the 81st Precinct in Brooklyn who secretly gathered evidence, including audio recordings, of crime-report manipulation. Shortly after Mr. Schoolcraft presented the evidence to police investigators, his superiors had him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, saying he was in the midst of a psychiatric emergency.

According to the Times, the survey respondents ranged from chiefs and inspectors to sergeants and detectives. About 44 percent, or 871, had retired since 2002. More than half of those recent retirees said they had "personal knowledge" of crime-report manipulation, according to the summary, and within that group, more than 80 percent said they knew of three or more instances in which officers or their superiors rewrote a crime report to downgrade the offense or intentionally failed to take a complaint alleging a crime.

Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist at Berkeley Law School, that compared the department's crime data for homicide, robbery, auto theft and burglary to insurance claims, health statistics and victim surveys and found a near-exact correlation, according to the Times.

Mr. Zimring said his research found that the 80 percent decrease in those four crimes reported by the department from 1990 to 2009 was "real."

He said that there was always "some underreporting, and there is some downgrading in every police force that I know of," but that his research showed that any manipulation was too minuscule to significantly affect the department's crime statistics.

To read more: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/nyregion/new-york-police-department-manipulates-crime-reports-study-finds.xml