Donald Trump spins false narrative about rising crime

"Our crime rate is going up," former President Donald Trump claimed during the Republican National Convention last week, when he vowed to "Make America Safe Once Again."

Yet the most notable recent increase in the homicide rate happened on Trump's watch, and violent crime has been falling since then.

That gap between Republican rhetoric and reality corresponds with longstanding public perceptions of crime, which Americans routinely say is going up even when it is going down. Trump is hoping to capitalize on that misperception as he campaigns on a promise to reverse a nonexistent trend by "restor(ing) law and order."

Violent crime in the United States has fallen precipitously since 1993, when the homicide rate was 9.5 per 100,000 residents. By 2013, the rate was less than half that number.

Despite ups and downs since then, the homicide rate remains substantially lower than it was three decades ago. The same is true of robbery, aggravated assault and property crime.

The biggest recent spike in murders was in 2020, when the rate rose by a whopping 30%. It fell by about 7% in 2022, and preliminary estimates indicate it fell again in 2023, by about 13% — one of the largest annual drops ever recorded. So far this year, according to data from more than 200 cities, the homicide rate is down by even more: about 19%.

The major exception to recent positive crime trends has been car theft, which rose by 4% in 2021 and by 10.4% in 2022. That is a pretty thin reed on which to hang Trump's claim that "our crime rate is going up."

Most Americans wrongly believe crime is up

Fortunately for Trump, the data don't seem to have made much of an impression on most Americans. Last October, 77% of respondents told Gallup they believed crime had increased in the United States compared to the previous year.

That was roughly consistent with the results for all but a few years after 1993, when most Americans continued to say crime was getting worse even as the data showed otherwise. That was true even in 2013, when the homicide rate fell to its lowest recent level, but 64% of Gallup respondents thought crime was increasing.

Starting with the false premise that crime generally is on the rise, Republicans blame Democrats for allowing it to happen. "Under Joe Biden, the rule of law has disintegrated," Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) averred at the Republican convention. "Crime is rampant. Our communities are under siege."

More specifically, Republicans say Biden's border policies have unleashed a wave of "migrant crime." To back up that claim, Trump cited three murders committed by men who entered the country illegally.

Horrifying as those crimes are, they do not prove the Republican thesis, which seems inconsistent with recent crime numbers. As Cato Institute immigration expert David Bier notes, "The most significant crime spike in recent years occurred in 2020 — when illegal immigration was historically low until the end of the year" because of pandemic-related restrictions.

Thanks to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's busing program, cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, New York and Los Angeles have seen large influxes of migrants. Their crime rates nevertheless have declined.

The expectation the opposite would happen is based on the assumption that illegal immigrants are especially prone to commit crimes against people or property. But extensive research indicates immigrants in general are less likely to commit such crimes than native-born Americans, and that seems to also be true of unauthorized immigrants, although that finding is more controversial.

"Meanwhile, our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down," Trump said last week. "Because they're taking their criminals, and they're putting them into our country."

Whatever you make of Trump's attempt to blame supposedly rising crime rates on the Biden administration's "ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies," it looks like an answer in search of a question.

Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine.

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