In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, Republican candidates across the nation are blaming Democrats for an increase in crime.
But as a scholar of criminology and criminal justice, I believe it’s important to note that, despite the apparently confident assertions of politicians, it’s not so easy to make sense of fluctuations in the crime rate. And whether it’s going up or down depends on a few key questions:
Here’s an explanation of those elements – and why there is no one answer to whether crime has increased in the past year, or over the past decade.
Usually when politicians, public officials and scholars talk about crime statistics, they’re referring to the most serious crimes, which the FBI officially calls “index” or “Part 1” offenses: criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson.
Because these crimes vary a great deal in terms of seriousness, experts break this list up into “violent” and “property” offenses, so as not to confuse a surge in thefts with an increase in killings.
