Overview
As the DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics explains, “The United States uses two national data collection systems to track detailed information on homicides.” These consist of:
- death certificates collected by the states and compiled by the CDC.
- reports by local law enforcement agencies compiled by the states and aggregated by the FBI, which also generates estimates for agencies that don’t report.
Death certificates have always provided broader and more accurate data than the FBI’s figures, but the gap between them has grown sharply under the Biden administration. This may indicate that local law enforcement agencies, states, and/or the FBI are undercounting murders.
Furthermore, the Biden administration FBI inexplicably revised its pre-Biden murder data all the way back to 2003, elevating the counts in certain years by up to 7%. The FBI made these unprecedented alterations without so much as a footnote to inform the public.
As a result of those factors and others, the gap between murders reported by the FBI and the number of homicides recorded on death certificates has grown from a low of 16 killings in 2003 to an average of 3,711 killings per year during Biden’s presidency:
Again, all of the figures above are homicides recorded on death certificates that are not reported as murders by Biden’s FBI.
The FBI is part of the DOJ, which is under the authority of the president. The leaders of the DOJ and FBI are both appointed by the president.
Measuring Murder
In addition to being the worst crime, murder is also the most measurable one. Per the World Bank, “The intentional killing of a human being by another is the ultimate crime. Its indisputable physical consequences manifested in the form of a dead body also make it the most categorical and calculable.”
Still, there are challenges in measuring murder and significant differences between the two primary measures of homicide in the United States. In the words of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, death certificates provide “more accurate homicide trends at the national level than” FBI data because:
- the reporting of death certificates is “mandatory,” while the FBI relies on “voluntary” reports “from individual law enforcement agencies” that are “compiled monthly by state-level agencies.”
- death certificates include homicides that “occur in federal jurisdictions,” while the FBI rarely counts “homicides occurring in federal prisons, on military bases, and on Indian reservations.”
- death certificates include homicides caused by the deliberate “crashing of a motor vehicle, but this category generally accounts for less than 100 deaths per year.”
On the other hand, death certificates tend to overcount murders because they include:
- justifiable homicides by civilians acting in self-defense, which are not murders.
- some justifiable homicides by police, even though these are supposed to be coded as “legal intervention deaths,” not as homicides.
Despite those differences, a 2014 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that “the two sources show similar trends for the rate of homicides over time at the national level,” although the count of death certificates “consistently shows a higher number and rate of homicides” at the national level than FBI data. This chart from the report illustrates the point:
Biden-Era Revisions
Each year in the fall, the FBI typically publishes crime data from the prior year and revises its data from one year before that. In 2020, for example, the FBI published new murder data for 2019 and revised its murder estimate for 2018 from 16,214 to 16,374, an increase of 160 murders, or 1%. To alert people to the change, the FBI added a footnote next to the year 2018 that says, “The crime figures have been adjusted.”
In 2023, however, the FBI revised its murder data from every prior year back to 2003. While the changes in some years were minimal, others were substantial. For example, the FBI altered its murder estimate for 2003 from 16,528 to 17,716, an increase of 1,188, or 7%.
Illuminating the rarity of those changes, the highlighted figures in the table below show all of the FBI’s revisions of murder data from 2003 to 2022 in reports published from 2004 to 2023. Note that the FBI excluded most historical data from its 2022 publication of 2021 data, which is why there are only two figures in the 2021 column:
Furthermore, the scale of the changes that the FBI published in 2023 are far greater than any in the past. Yet, the FBI only included a footnote to alert people to the change for 2021 and none of the other 18 years.
In 2024, the FBI made other murder revisions. Most significantly, it reduced the murder estimate for 2021 from 22,536 to 21,462, a decrease of 1,074, or 5%.
Prior Administrations
After discovering the Biden-era data revisions, Just Facts dug deeper by calculating the gaps between FBI murders and death certificate homicides using FBI publications issued during other presidencies.
Just Facts’ analysis revealed that the vast bulk of gap increases materialized during the Biden administration, but there were notable trends under other presidents as well.
During the presidency of George W. Bush, the gap remained roughly level at around 9% except for 2001 because the FBI didn’t include the 9/11 terrorist attack killings in the count of murders. However, Biden’s FBI substantially increased murder counts in the earlier years of Bush’s term, making it seem like the gap between FBI murders and death certificate homicides increased from about 0% to 9% during his presidency:
During the presidency of Barack Obama, the gap increased from 10% to 13%. Other than two years, Obama’s FBI left the Bush-era murder counts unchanged. Biden’s FBI raised the murder counts in assorted years of Obamas’ term, thus reducing the gap in certain years, but the general trend remained intact:
During the presidency of Donald Trump, the gap increased from 13% to 17%. Other than the customary prior year revision, Trump’s FBI left the Bush and Obama-era murder counts unchanged. However, Biden’s FBI irregularly increased the murder counts throughout Trump’s term, making it seem like the gap jumped up and down between 7% to 13%:
In summary, the gaps between FBI murders and death certificate homicides rose significantly in publications issued under all of the presidents but Bush. However, the Biden era publications and revisions are unprecedented in scope and scale.
Lack of Transparency
To determine if there was a legitimate basis for the FBI’s revisions, Just Facts filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI on June 7. More than five months later, the FBI has not replied.
Just Facts also emailed the FBI’s National Press Office on November 15 and is awaiting a response.
Beyond the unmarked murder revisions in 2023, the FBI has been burying its crime data since the first year of the Biden administration. Prior to this, the FBI published its annual “Crime in the United States” report with a simple overview page that provided links to webpages with clear summaries and datasets for different categories of crimes.
Since 2021, however, Biden’s FBI has buried these datasets in a fragmented manner under a maze of vaguely worded dropdown menus and acronyms with expiring hyperlinks.
That convoluted system has led to some massive underreports of violent crime. For a prime example, NewsNation reported in 2022 that 14,677 murders occurred in 2021 based on the FBI’s convoluted presentation of its data. This was 8,000 fewer murders than the FBI’s actual estimate of 22,900 murders that year.
To rectify this problem, Just Facts has posted the FBI’s crime data for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 at easily accessible permalinks. Data for earlier years are still available from the FBI.
Throughout this period of data burying, stealth murder revisions, and unprecedented disconnects between FBI murders and death certificate homicides, the director of the FBI has been Christopher Wray. He has led the agency since the first year of the Trump administration and throughout the Biden administration.
By James D. Agresti
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research and educational institute dedicated to publishing facts about public policies and teaching research skills.
