The number of murders in the United States increased by 4.3% year-on-year in 2021 to 22,900 registered cases, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th October, 2022) The number of murders in the United States increased by 4.3% year-on-year in 2021 to 22,900 registered cases, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Wednesday.
"In 2021, the estimated number of murders saw a 4.3% increase, which did not constitute a statistically significant change from 2020 levels," the FBI said in a new crime report.
The violent crime rate remained at or near the level registered in 2020, the report said.
The figures provided in the report have been criticized by several civil society groups that argue they do not reflect the true state of affairs regarding the crime rate in the United States.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the FBI fully transitioned to the National Incident-Based Reporting System on January 1, 2021, instead using the old system, the Uniform Crime Reporting program, that has been in place for nearly a century.
Many state and local law enforcement agencies have not yet changed the reporting system and failed to report a full year of data for 2021, making the data presented in the report incomplete, the Brennan Center for Justice said in a press release.
A host of large US cities, including New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as the states of California and Florida, did not report crime data to the FBI in 2021, the Marshall Project said. The Marshall Project found that nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies did not report their crime data to the FBI.
The report said the FBI received crime data from 11,794 law enforcement agencies in 2021, covering only 215 million inhabitants of the United States, while the US population was more than 330 million as of January 1. Those agencies reported more than 11 million offenses in 2021.
It remains unclear whether the FBI will issue an updated version of the report following the receipt of the missing data.
