Crime is one of the issues at the center of the presidential campaign, and according to the latest quarterly report from the FBI, crime rates for the second quarter of this year are down in every category. Violent crime is down 10%, robbery is down 14% and murder is down 23%.
Shawn Weneta at the Humanization Project says this shows criminal justice reform is working.
"Perception and reality are oftentimes very different things. We are living in a historically safe time right now," Weneta explains. "Crime is at historic lows, and crimes have dropped at historic levels particularly since the very narrow spikes that we had during the pandemic."
Chuck Meire at human rights nonprofit Julian says people will often hear about a few carjackings that happened near their neighborhood and jump to conclusions.
"People will take that story and apply it and say crime must be skyrocketing because this one offense we're seeing is skyrocketing when in reality violent crime as a whole, especially nationally, is decreasing and it's already at a historical low point," Meire says.
Crime data often lags because of the way the statistics are collected. Virginia crime data for 2023 was only recently released, for example. But this quarterly report from this calendar year is an effort by the FBI to make sure the latest national numbers are available quickly.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
