Like many politicians, Donald Trump loves to use crime statistics for political gain, as he repeatedly claims crime has skyrocketed under the Biden-Harris administration. But are crime rates actually up since Trump left office in 2020? Not according to current Biden’s Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.
In a recent X post, Buttigieg put it plainly when he wrote, “Crime went up under Trump. Crime is down under Biden-Harris. We’re not going back.” The comment hearkens back to the talking point Buttigieg made in his now-viral interview on Fox News from late July in which he told viewers to “do yourself a favor” and look up the facts.
Crime statistics are complicated. FBI data is typically used to determine if crime is up or down, but not all crimes are reported, and certain kinds of crime might be up in some places but down elsewhere. Other social and economic factors can also affect crime rates that are beyond the control of any president.
The FBI’s most recent crime-tracking data is from 2022, and according to NBC News, the federal agency said it will publish complete crime-tracking for 2023 before the election. With all that in mind, violent crime is down since Trump left office, with murder, rape, and assault all down in cities with populations of 1 million or more. (The same often Democratically-led cities Trump’s campaign likes to call “cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”) That said, certain crimes like vehicle theft have increased under the Biden administration.
Apples and pandemic oranges?
As some comments on Pete Buttigieg’s X post pointed out, Trump’s first-term crime rate statistics were affected by pandemic-related lockdowns and economic stress, as well as the Black social justice demonstrations in 2020. Or as one comment put it, bluntly, “You mean when people were burning their cities to the ground and Governors refused Trump’s ‘racist’ aid offers? That crime?” So, crime did shoot up in 2020, the last year of Trump’s presidency, for reasons arguably beyond his control, and possibly explaining why they have declined since then as things have normalized.
The FBI has also updated its crime-reporting procedures under the Biden administration which some claim excludes many areas where crimes are committed, creating the false impression crime rates have plummeted. According to The Marshall Project, however, there was no grand conspiracy to cook the crime data in Biden’s favor, but more like bureaucratic delays as some law enforcement rushed to catch up with the changes. The FBI backtracked and allowed crimes to be reported through the old method for a while, so it’s too early to tell how this update has affected crime data.
What about migrant crime?
Donald Trump also likes to blame migration for surging crime in some areas, and so-called “sanctuary cities,” but this, too, is not supported by the numbers. Many of the same major cities Texas Governor Greg Abbott bussed or flew migrants in “Operation Lone Star” have seen crime decrease. And in places where it has increased like Washington D.C., officials don’t attribute the trend to immigration, NBC News reported. “There’s no evidence for there being any relationship between somebody’s immigrant status and their involvement in crime,” College of William & Mary professor and immigration expert Graham Ousey told the outlet.
In the end, crime rates appear to be declining, although some data is missing, and other circumstances have changed beyond Biden or Trump’s control, and the FBI’s 2023 data should present a more complete picture. So Buttigieg’s X post is an accurate, if oversimplified, representation of the facts.