On Monday, the FBI released nationwide crime statistics for 2020, which will likely contribute to the already tense political debate over crime and policing. The data showed a nearly 30 percent increase in murders compared with the year prior, the largest spike since national record-keeping began in 1960. Nevertheless, murder rates are significantly below what they were throughout the 1990s. Overall, violent crime increased by nearly 6 percent, while property crimes went down by 8 percent.
Crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics Jeff Asher joins the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast to unpack the numbers in the report. He discusses what the trends can and can’t tell us about what caused the spike, how crime data is gathered and how Americans perceive the crime rate.
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