It’s easy to see why some are a little cynical when the FBI reports, only five weeks before the presidential election, that violent crime declined in 2023. Negative public perceptions about crime have been a challenge for the Biden-Harris administration. However, some surveys have not seen any significant drop in violent crime rates. More importantly, the FBI doesn’t mention one crime statistic that has been ubiquitous in the news the last few years: shoplifting.
According to the FBI’s report, “crime statistics estimates, based on reported data for 2023, show that national violent crime decreased an estimated 3.0% in 2023 compared to 2022 estimates.” While that would be good if true, it’s not a significant drop.
The report also claims that murder and non-negligent manslaughter declined 11.6 percent, rape dropped 9.4 percent and robbery decreased 0.3 percent. Motor vehicle theft, by contrast, was up 12.6 percent.
Why should we be skeptical of the FBI’s findings? For one thing, it relies on “participating law enforcement agencies.” And some agencies don’t participate, including the Los Angeles Police Department. In addition, if people don’t report a crime to the police, it likely isn’t counted.
There’s more. Jeffrey H. Anderson, a former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), reminds us in the Wall Street Journal that the Bureau conducts its own survey, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). It relies on responses from some 230,000 households, rather than law enforcement agencies, and found that violent crime rose by 19 percent between 2019 and 2023. Anderson also stresses that the urban violent crime rate is rising even faster: up 54 percent between 2019 and 2023, which is more in line with public perception. Rural and suburban violent crime rates are virtually unchanged over that period.
But what has received so much attention over the past few years is the rampant increase of brazen shoplifting. In many cases several thieves, sometimes armed, rush into stores and grab thousands of dollars of merchandise. In other instances, it may be just one or two thieves, casually walking a store’s aisles, tossing costly items into bags.
The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), which “examines monthly crime rates for 12 violent, property, and drug offenses in 39 American cities,” released its mid-year report in June. According to CCJ, nearly all the crime rates fell between the first half of 2023 and the first half of 2024, except “rates of reported shoplifting, a crime that has received extensive attention from the media and policymakers, increased by 24%.”
In its most recent report, released a year ago, the National Retail Federation (NRF) noted, “As incidents of retail crime continue to escalate throughout the country, retailers have seen a dramatic jump in financial losses associated with theft. When taken as a percentage of total retail sales in 2022, shrink accounted for $112.1 billion in losses, up from $93.9 billion in 2021.” (“Shrink” is mostly theft, but it can include other types of losses.)
The result of exploding retail theft has led many companies to close stores in several urban areas, both because of unsustainable losses and concern for employee safety. The NRF says, “Retailers reported being forced to close a specific store location (28%), reduce operating hours (45%) or reduce or alter in-store product selection (30%) as a direct result of retail crime.”
Two-thirds of retailers said criminals were becoming even more aggressive. The result: “more retailers have opted to enforce a ‘hands off’ approach in the apprehension of shoplifters. More survey respondents said that no employees are authorized to stop or apprehend shoplifters (41%), compared with 38% last year.”
If Anderson is right that urban crime is increasing while suburban and rural crime is decreasing or stable, the explanation may be in progressive policies like “defund the police” along with significant increases in the amount thieves are allowed to steal (e.g., $950) before it’s considered a felony.
From a thief’s standpoint, why break into a house, likely in a low-income area, where there is little of value to steal when the thief can walk into a drugstore or department store in San Francisco, Chicago or New York City and take thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise and no one will stop him?
It’s the famous Willie Sutton response. When Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” In big blue cites with very progressive district attorneys, mayors and city councils who wink at rampant theft, retail stores are where the money (or merchandise) is.
So, while crime may be down or flat in some categories, that may be because the criminals have found a more lucrative and safer way to practice their profession. Democrats, Vice President Kamala Harris and the media want to tout the FBI’s new declining-crime statistics. But the real story is rising retail theft that is a direct result of their progressive policies.
Merrill Matthews is a public policy and political analyst and the co-author of “On the Edge: America Faces the Entitlements Cliff.” Follow him on X@MerrillMatthews.
