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A preliminary examination of the FBI’s reported crime data for 2025. Numbers from the USDOJās National Crime Victimization Survey provide a comparative perspective.
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While crime statistics are factual, they don’t always capture the complete picture. Anyone can make claims about crime using data from the FBI or the National Crime Victimization Survey.
The FBI focuses on reported crime, whereas the public experiences the full spectrum of criminal activity.
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The FBI’s initial report on 2025 crime reveals 1,119,768 violent crimes, a decrease of 9.3 percent, and 5,245,768 property crimes, a decline of 12.4 percent.
Data from the USDOJās National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) recorded 6,671,640 violent victimizations and 13,069,560 property crimes in 2024 for comparison.
The significant disparities between FBI data and the National Crime Victimization Survey have led many criminologists to support the survey, recognizing that reported crime figures alone do not adequately represent crime trends.
The NCVS has documented a notable rise in violent crime rates, detailed below.
The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) now encompasses over 15,000 of 18,000 law enforcement agencies and can track up to 10 crimes per incident.
Previously, the FBI’s Summary Reporting System counted only the most severe offense in an incident for national totals. This approach continues for national reports.
Although NIBRS includes multiple offenses per incident, only the most serious crimes are reflected in this report. The NIBRS system and additional crimes per incident are utilized for FBI special reports.
Preliminary FBI reports typically undercount crime, as many law enforcement agencies delay submitting their data. The official FBI report for 2025 is expected later this year.
The Majority Of Crime Is Not Reported To Law Enforcement
Many crimes, particularly property-related, may not appear in FBI statistics. For instance, there are 120 million porch package thefts in the US, with searches for āstolen packageā peaking each December, according to Google Trends. The survey shows that there are significantly more porch-pirate thefts than the property crimes reported to the FBI, with a financial impact of $16 billion. However, the methodology for this report differs greatly from that used by the FBI.
Most crimes are not reported to law enforcement. Approximately 30 percent of property crimes and about half of violent crimes are reported, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
For juvenile victims, 74 percent of violent victimizations were not reported to the police, and juvenile crime appears to be increasing in certain cities. For identity theft, only about 7 percent of incidents were reported, while 13 percent of sexual assaults in urban areas were reported, as per the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
In 2023, the FBI received reports of about 12,000 hate crime incidents, whereas the Bureau of Justice Statisticsā National Crime Victimization Survey recorded approximately 250,000 annual hate crime incidents. Policymakers tend to rely on the larger figures.
National Crime Victimization Survey
Using law enforcement-reported crimes as a measure for all crimes in the US is fraught with methodological challenges. This is why reliance is placed on the USDOJās National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which records all crimes except those involving individuals under 12, business crimes, and homicides.
The US Department of Justice and US Census describe the NCVS as āthe nationās primary source of information on criminal victimization.ā
In 2022, the NCVS documented a 44 percent surge in violent victimization rates, with these rates remaining steady in 2023 and 2024 according to the USDOJās Bureau of Justice Statistics. Meanwhile, the FBI reported a reduction in crime for 2024.
These estimates are derived from data submitted by over 17,000 agencies, covering 96% of the population for 2025, up from 16,675 agencies in 2024. More than 15,000 agencies provided data via the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for 2025, covering nearly 90% of the population. Nearly 500 additional agencies reported via NIBRS in 2025 compared to 2024. These figures are preliminary and may change before the release of āReported Crimes in the Nation, 2025,ā which will be available on the FBIās Crime Data Explorer website later this year. Data as of April 2, 2026.
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