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- [00:04]
Cheryl Akisson
Hi, everybody. Cheryl Achison here. Welcome to another edition of Full Measure After Hours today, whether it's America's violent crime rate as measured by the FBI or crimes committed by illegal immigrants, expert John Lott says there are countless ways the statistics and our minds are being manipulated. As you may know, there is an ongoing debate over whether crime in America has gone up or down under the Biden administration. There are other debates as well, such as how illegal immigration has impacted the crime rate in America. This became a presidential election issue, you may recall, during the one debate between President Elect Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the Democrat candidate at the time. Trump referred to the rising violent crime rate only to have the moderator do, well, let's call it a fake fact check and claim that the FBI statistics in essence proved that that's not true. Well, there's a lot more behind that story. Shortly after the debate, the FBI quietly revised its statistics online, and what had looked like a drop in violent crime actually became a significant increase. There are reasons why all of this is occurring. And this week on full measure, Sunday, January 12, I dig into the whole thing with the help of an expert on crime statistics, John Lott. Among other things, Lott has served as a senior advisor for research and statistics in the Department of Justice. He's going to make your head spin, but in a very interesting way when it comes to all the statistics that are used to prove a certain point and how he says they are being misused and manipulated more often than they used to be anyways by the federal government. Here is my interview with John Locke.
- [02:04]
John Lott
I mean, I served as senior advisor for research and statistics in the Department of Justice for the Office of Justice Programs and then the Office of Legal Policy. I was chief economist for the United States Sentencing Commission. And I've been an academic most of my life. I've had research or teaching positions at Stanford, University of Chicago, Yale, the Wharton Business School, ucla. But I've taught in law schools and business schools and econ departments and public policy schools.
- [02:35]
Interviewer
As sort of an overview, from what you've seen, have crime statistics always been politicized and maybe somewhat manipulated?
- [02:43]
John Lott
I think it's gotten a lot worse in the last few years. Maybe over the last decade or so, it's gotten a lot worse. I mean, there's numbers that come out of the Department of Justice now that I just don't believe at all.
- [02:57]
Interviewer
If you had to give an overview in just a couple sentences before we dig into specifics, if you had to give an overview of what you see as the problem for an American public who may not be familiar with this topic, how would you say it?
- [03:10]
John Lott
That's a good question. So much of it's in the weeds. There are so many people that want to push narratives for different things. Well, I can tell you I worked in the federal government in the 1980s, and if you went to somebody and you said you got an error in your data, they'd fix it. I had people now that just would fight you tooth and nail. I mean, even when you could get them to admit that there was an error, they would never fix it. There's data errors that I point out when I was at the Department of Justice that I got them to admit were wrong. And I mean, we're four plus years later and they still haven't fixed those types of things.
- [03:53]
Interviewer
I've heard, for example, the number of violent crimes is down in various areas. The national number of murders and homicides is down. I've also heard that some crimes aren't being counted anymore or some cities aren't reporting them to the FBI, or the FBI's not counting them. Can you give us just a summary of the landscape and then we can talk about some specifics? Has there been a big shift in what we count as crimes and how the FBI collects its statistics?
- [04:20]
John Lott
There has been a big change. Starting in 2021, they had a new system for reporting this data to the FBI from police departments around the country. In 2020, 97% of police departments reported data, 10% of them only partially reported. But 97% at least reported something. In 2022, 31% of police departments didn't report any crime data to the FBI. Another 24% only partially reported data. So you had less than half of police departments in 2022 and 2021 reporting complete crime data to the FBI. That's a huge sea change. They don't put zeros in on though. They try to guess. The question is how good of a job they do in guessing. I don't think they do a very good job in terms of guessing, but.
- [05:09]
Interviewer
So when we hear a stat like the number of murders in 2023 was down, do you think that's true?
- [05:17]
John Lott
Well, even that we have different measures of that. We have the FBI data, but then we have the Centers for Disease Control has a measure of homicides minus legal interventions where police may have shot somebody or somebody was killed legally. And those two numbers really, for kind of the first time, are going in opposite directions. The FBI data showed that murders peaked in 2020 and fell after that the Centers for Disease Control Data showed that 2022 was higher than 2020. And 2022 is the last complete year, final year. We have data for both the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control. But look, the main comparison we make in terms of different crime data is the FBI to something called the National Crime Victimization Survey, which is put out by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. And the reason why we have this national crime victimization data is we know most crimes aren't reported to police. About 40% of violent crimes are reported to police. About 30% of property crimes are reported to police. And that varies over time, what it is. But when you hear the media go and talk about crime falling, what they're talking about are crimes reported to police, not the total crimes. And for the life of me, I don't understand why people are just interested in crimes reported to police as opposed to the total crimes that are there. Before 2020, those numbers tended to go up and down together. The reported and the national crime victimization data. Since 2020, they've been going in completely opposite directions. So, for example, in 2022, while the FBI showed a 2% drop in violent crime, reported violent crime, the national crime victimization data showed a 42% increase in. In violent crime. That's the largest yearly increase we've ever seen in that measure. And that's going back 50 years. And there are lots of reasons why I think this is the case. One of the biggest things that I think is going on is I don't think people have an idea that law enforcement's collapsing in this country. But I don't think they completely understand how much it's collapsed. So you go to a CVS here in Washington, D.C. or Walgreens, all sorts of stuff is behind Plexiglas. You have to go and get a sales clerk to come over and open it up and stand next to you while you go and read the ingredients that are there. People know that that wasn't true a few years ago. It's just not D.C. it's New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, other major cities around the country. But it's just not property crime like that. And one of the things you can look at is that even if you just want to use the FBI data, there's been a huge drop in arrest rates and a drop that we've never seen before occur.
- [08:15]
Interviewer
What does that tell you?
- [08:16]
John Lott
Well, I think it tells you something about the defunding of the police. I think it tells you something about the retirements that you have Even in the last year or so, when they go and try to hire new police there, you've lost somebody who has 15 years of experience. Having somebody on the job for six months or a year isn't going to be as effective is this 15 year veteran that you've lost there. And I just give you briefly numbers. So if you look at reported violent crime with the FBI for cities over a million, the arrest rate for violent crime has fallen by 55%. The arrest rate for property crime has fallen by 65%. What years that would be? If you compare the five years before COVID to 2022, and you know you have a situation where that's just reported crime, what's happened is unreported crime has increased, okay. Because people say, I'm only going to report these crimes if I think the guy's going to get arrested. And also it's more difficult now to report crimes. In many parts of the country, people think Simply calling up 911 results in a police report. You actually have to have a police officer fill out a police report for you on this. And in many parts of the country, if you call up 911, they'll say, is it an emergency? Meaning is the criminal there right now committing the crime? And if you say no, they'll say, well, you can come down to the police station and we'll fill out a police report. Well, a few years ago they would have sent out a police car to go and do that. You make it more difficult for people to report a crime. Some people aren't going to report them now. That's going to be there.
- [10:03]
Interviewer
So what looks like on paper a reduction in crime may be the result of many other things. It sounds like you're including fewer people reporting the crimes, fewer police to handle the crimes, fewer prosecutors prosecuting the crimes. So there are many factors at play that could make the crime rate look a lot better than it is.
- [10:24]
John Lott
Right? Exactly. That reported crimes are different than total crimes. And you think most people would understand that even in the media.
- [10:32]
Interviewer
So as you've watched these reports, as a person that studies data and figures, what are some of your thoughts about what's going on in this country as you're trying. As you see, we in the media are trying to get a handle on what's going on. Political figures like to quote the numbers, particularly if it's good for them or bad for their opponent. What do you make of that when you're hearing all of that?
- [10:51]
John Lott
Well, I mean, I wrote an op ed for the Wall Street Journal. I've written other pieces for the New York Post and places like that just to try to get the information out. You know, my first assumption is that the media just doesn't know the different numbers that are there. And in the past, the FBI data on reported crime was at least a reasonable proxy for what was happening to total crimes that are happening. It's not now, but you figure once you kind of go and try to alert people to that, that they'll become more sensitive to it. But it has had no effect. You still see headlines that say crime is falling, but people erroneously think that it's going up. And I think the people are right and that looking at simply reported crimes is misleading.
- [11:35]
Interviewer
Do you have. How do you get better numbers? I mean, you gave some sources and some different ways that data is collected, but if we get some data from you, as I write a story and decide maybe to make some comparative numbers, how would you describe to people that you get better numbers or maybe numbers that give a big. The bigger picture in a better way?
- [11:56]
John Lott
Well, you know, the question is, we know there's differences between the number of crimes reported to police and what happens with total crime. And we have a pretty good idea how those two numbers can vary relative to each other over time. And so the question is, do you want to look at just crimes reported to police, or do you want to look at the measure we have of total crimes? And you have these two different sources. You have the FBI data on reported crimes, and then you have the Bureau of Justice Statistics measure of total crimes that are there. And so, you know, people can go to the Bureau of Justice Statistics website and they can go and look up this data.
- [12:35]
Interviewer
This is publicly available data that's done on a survey.
- [12:38]
John Lott
He says they surveyed 240,000 people. You know, so most people think a large survey is like 8,000 people or 10,000 people. This is a massive survey that's done.
- [12:48]
Interviewer
And over time, those numbers have tracked well with reported crimes. When they've been prior to. Thought to be accurate.
- [12:55]
John Lott
Prior to 2020, those numbers generally went up and down together. Not perfectly, but generally went up and down together since. Since 2020, they've been almost perfectly going in opposite directions. There's no year where one went up that the other didn't go down. And I've never seen that happen before, and surely not by the large margins that they've been going in opposite directions.
- [13:25]
Interviewer
For people who aren't going to dig into the data themselves, what is something you would like them to know when they hear these stories in the news or hear hear politicians quoting figures, well.
- [13:34]
John Lott
I hope that they understand that the numbers that are being quoted are reported crime data. So when Pete Buttigieg gets on Fox News Sunday or at the National Democratic Convention and says you can go and look up this data yourself, just realize, you know, if you look it up in the FBI data, that's going to tell you what happened to reported crimes and you probably care about what happens to total crimes. And that's in a different place. And it's less likely that people are going to know where to go and look up these different types of data.
- [14:07]
Interviewer
And the FBI is estimating they're not getting hard data from some, right?
- [14:12]
John Lott
Well, over the years, what's happened since after 2020, a huge percentage of police departments have stopped reporting the data.
- [14:20]
Interviewer
Why do you think that is?
- [14:22]
John Lott
Well, I think there are a couple reasons that that's happening. One is for some police departments, you know, having to report multiple times a year is a little bit more of a burden on them. But that's not true for large police departments. In 2022, you had new York City and Los Angeles not report the crime data to the FBI. They have it on their website. You can go and look at their CompStat data and see by week what's happening to it. It's not like they can't send it in. So I think it's a combination of things. I think there's some where it's just a little bit extra burden, and I think others where it's just political. They've just decided that they're not going to report the data.
- [15:02]
Interviewer
Based on the numbers you've seen, what would you say is the true crime trend in this country and may be different for violent crimes and nonviolent crimes, but what do you see in the numbers?
- [15:14]
John Lott
Well, I think it's gone up tremendously. Violent crime during the Biden administration, I think it's gone up by about 43% since he's been president. And I think there are two reasons why the media wants to go and kind of claim that it's going down. One is just, unfortunately, I think probably just to help the Democrats on this. But I think the other thing, and a number of Democrats have made this explicit, is they say, look, we've had many millions of illegals coming into the country and violent crime is falling. And so they say it can't be illegals causing more crime because crime is dropping over this period of time. And so, I mean, I like to believe that that's not their motivation. But I think that's part of what's going on.
- [16:00]
Interviewer
Is there any way to know? You know, we often hear that illegal immigrants commit far fewer crimes per person than American citizens. I've seen stats that from they're fairly old now, probably 2008, 2010 time period collected by GAO from FBI and other sources that imply otherwise.
- [16:21]
John Lott
Right.
- [16:21]
Interviewer
But is there any way to know what the crime rate among illegal immigrants is versus American citizens?
- [16:27]
John Lott
Well, we have snapshots such as what you were referring to. The problem is, is that it seems to be politically toxic for either states or the federal government to collect this type of data that's there. And even when some places may try to check this right now, they'll go and see, do you have a Social Security number? And you know, the Biden administration's been giving Social Security numbers out to all sorts of people. And so there are problems with that.
- [16:54]
Interviewer
But who they're counting is an illegal.
- [16:56]
John Lott
Alien or immigrant right now what I found, I did some work for the county prosecutors in Arizona a few years ago, is on their state prison system is that you have big differences between legal and illegal immigrants. Legal immigrants seemed to commit crimes at very low rates. Their share of the prison population was well below their share of the of the state population. Illegal immigrants though had a very high rate of crime, particularly very violent crime, anything from kidnappings to murders compared to the general population that are there. Usually what happens in discussions is they mix the two together and so then they'll get a rate that could be roughly similar or maybe even slightly below what it is for native born Americans. And I think that's very misleading to lump those two groups together.
- [17:53]
Interviewer
I think more and more people on the one hand are coming to rely on the promise of artificial intelligence as sources of information. But a lot of us think that simply allows those who want to manipulate the information to have a great tool that everybody refers to coming to all come into the same place to be able to get out a certain narrative. What are your thoughts about how crime is reported?
- [18:15]
John Lott
Well, I mean, I think people have some idea of the biases. Just when you go and you do a Google News search, you know what types of articles come up at the top. They're going to be from the New York Times or the Washington Post. So you know that they have a certain kind of tilt to them. But I think the same tilt exists with regard to these artificial chat box where people use it to go and get informed about things. But students, researchers, media people all use this type of thing. And so we asked a series of questions. We've done it in March. We just did another report in August that asked nine questions about crime and seven about gun control issues. So we'd ask, do you think higher arrest rates and higher conviction rates reduce crime? I don't know. I mean, to me that seems pretty obvious that that's how you do it. You make it riskier for criminals to commit crime. Basically, none of the chatbots agreed that that was the case. Almost all of them, 13 of the 15 that we had both periods, thought the opposite was true. And some of them, the most used ones, actually thought it was. They strongly disagreed with that statement. You know, they were making claims like, well, if you go and arrest and convict people, that just leads to more recidivism. And I'm thinking to myself, well, yeah, if you never arrest them or convict them, then you don't have to worry about recidivism because they never were in jail to begin with. That's one way we could just get rid of. We could get recidivism down to zero by not arresting or convicting anybody that's there. And, you know, there's other things like, do you think voter IDs are helpful in reducing vote fraud? And basically, they all think that it has no relationship to vote fraud that's occurring. You go and ask them questions about the death penalty or other things, you pretty much get the types of answers that you would expect out of all the chat box that we looked at. All of them were kind of very liberally biased on average, when it came to overall questions about crime and policing. With regard to gun control, there was only one that kind of gave conservative answers, and that was Elon Musk's Grok. But all the rest were, you know, you go and you say any type of gun control, everything from assault weapons bans to background checks on private transfers of guns, they're all in favor of those things.
- [20:53]
Interviewer
So, final overview question I'm thinking about. Do you think it's in human nature to hear a number and just think that's a fact? There's something about a statistic or data and those words that make people point to that and say, that's the truth?
- [21:09]
John Lott
I'm sure it is. And particularly if it's of a government statistic that's there. I mean, if you had asked me 20 years ago to have the skepticism I have about government data today, I wouldn't have had that reaction. But it's just you go and you argue with people. When I worked in the Federal government in the 80s. If I found an error in the data, people fixed it. If I find an error in the data when I was working in the Department of Justice, first of all, they would drag their feet and not want to change them. But even when you could get them to admit that there was an error, they would never fix it. They still haven't fixed it years after those acknowledgments occurred.
- [21:55]
Interviewer
Words of advice for consumers of this information.
- [21:59]
John Lott
I just would be really, you know, skeptical about most of the stuff you hear right now. I mean, I hope after this next election, people will be able to go in and try to clean up a lot of the political biases that are there. But whether that occurs or whether they'll even be successful in doing it, I have no idea. But at least hopefully, people begin to try.
- [22:19]
Interviewer
And just to address, to be clear, you obviously worked under Republican administration. You sound like a Republican.
- [22:25]
John Lott
Yeah, I am.
- [22:26]
Interviewer
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but how would you address people who say this is just a Republican who's messing with his own statistics?
- [22:33]
John Lott
Well, you know, things like the errors in the FBI active shooting reports. Nobody needs to take my word for whether they're missing these cases. We've listed out all the cases that are there, along with links to the underlying news stories. People can check themselves to see whether or not they fit the FBI definition. On all my reports I put out, the data is there so people can double check it. I've always done that. There are files on our website, Excel files, and other things that people can download and look at. We don't put out anything unless the underlying data is provided so that somebody, you know, hopefully skeptical people. And in my organization, the Crime Prevention Research center, we purposely have academics who have all sorts of different views on this. So, I mean, because I view it as important that you get people who disagree with you to argue with you beforehand to find out what any mistakes might be or errors might be in there before you put something out. And most organizations, I think even academia now, everybody kind of agrees with everybody else there. And unfortunately, I think the same thing has happened in a lot of the government agencies, too.
- [23:57]
Cheryl Akisson
There's a lot more to this story, and I will have that as my cover story on Sunday, January 12th on full measure. To find out where you can watch, go to cherylakkeson.com, click the full Measure tab for a list of stations and times. But if it's easier for you, you can always just watch online at FullMeasure News. It's always free. The show streams live starting about 9:35am Eastern Time on Sundays at Fullmeasure News. But if you miss it, never fear because we then post the whole program as well as the segments starting around noon at Fullmeasure News. So if you happen to be listening to this after January 12th, well, you can go to Fullmeasure News and watch a replay of the story anytime. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast and that if you did, you will take time to leave us a terrific review and share it with your friends. If you like the kinds of topics I explore and the guests that I have, go on over and check out my other podcast, the Cheryl Akisson Podcast, and I hope you will buy a copy of my bestseller Follow the Science How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails it's already resulted in some pretty significant changes when it comes to the manipulated scientific and medical community, but the most important thing this book does is it will open your eyes to some of the things that are meant to be invisible to you and me and patients when it comes to who's pulling strings behind the scenes and resulting in making us unhealthier as a society. Even as we've never spent more money on health care, doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, and so on. There are not only powerful anecdotes, but irrefutable citations, documentation and studies referenced in this book that make it, well, what some of the five star reviewers on Amazon call it, a really well chronicled and meticulous work. I call it a true life thriller that's Follow the science, do your own research, make up your own mind, think for yourself.