A Gallup poll released last month showed that the majority of Americans believe local crime has increased, as well as nationally. While it was not voters' No. 1 issue going into the midterms, it was one of the issues that came right behind inflation and the economy. And some are saying that Americans may move away from blue states due to the rampant crime.
A study conducted by Just Facts and shared with Fox News this week found that one out of 179 Americans will eventually be murdered in their lifetime if the country’s murder rate stays at 2021 levels.
According to Fox News, Just Facts, a nonprofit research center, undertook a “massive” project to find out how many people were murdered in 2021. That year, the FBI reportedly switched to a new recording program called the National Incident-Based Reporting System to keep track. Though, 40 percent of police departments across the country did not provide complete data on 2021 crime to the FBI by the deadline (via Fox News):
The FBI estimates that between 21,300 and 24,600 people were murdered last year, but that data is buried within its report, Just Facts outlines in its study, “As Murders Soar, FBI Buries the Data.”
Some outlets, such as NewsNation, have reported the murders were much lower, at 14,677, and heralded it as proof that murders are on a downward trend.
But as Just Facts points out in its study, the number released by the FBI does not fully capture the actual number of murders in 2021. The 14,677 figure is accompanied by caveats that only 11,794 of 18,806 law enforcement agencies in the country actually reported the crime data to the FBI and noted that the decrease was due to “an overall decrease in participation from agencies.”
The team at Just Facts began examining death certificates and digging through federal documents to pinpoint the murder rate for 2021.
After wading through the 2021 death certificate data from the CDC, Just Facts was able to determine that about 24,493 people were murdered in 2021. The number was determined after adjusting for the average number of justifiable homicides by civilians, which are not defined as murders; some justifiable homicides by police; and miscoded cases.
Reportedly, murders spiked nearly 30 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, marking the largest single-year increase in killings.
“For decades, the FBI has undercounted murders, while death certificates have overcounted them. Starting with data from death certificates and removing justifiable homicides provides a more reliable estimate of murders,” Just Facts’ study said.
The study then “[provided] a sense of scale for this {2021] bloodshed” and found that one person in every 179 Americans will eventually be murdered.
“Even in previous years, when murders were much less common, the lifetime likelihood of murder was so shocking to some people that they sent repeated emails to Just Facts insisting it was wrong. Yet, the methodology used by Just Facts to compute this figure was developed by a licensed actuary, double-checked by a Ph.D mathematician and triple-checked by a Ph.D biostatistician,” the study said.
