Violent crime, including homicides, rose for the second consecutive year in 2016, driven by increases in a few urban centers including Baltimore, Chicago and Las Vegas.
FBI statistics released today show that violent crime was up 4.1% last year, while murder increased by 8.6%. Last year, the FBI reported violent crime rose by 3.9% in 2015, while murder jumped by 10.8%.
Additional statistics from Crime in the United States, 2016 include:
- Last year’s data shows there were 95,730 rapes reported to law enforcement, based on the UCR’s legacy definition.
- Of the violent crimes reported to police in 2016, aggravated assault made up 64.3 percent, while robbery was 26.6 percent. Rape (legacy definition) accounted for 7.7 percent of the violent crimes reported last year, and murder made up 1.4 percent.
- About 7.9 million property crimes were reported to the UCR, with losses (excluding arson) of about $15.6 billion.
- The report estimates that law enforcement agencies made about 10.7 million arrests in 2016 (excluding arrests for traffic violations).
In a message accompanying the report, FBI Director Christopher Wray called on law enforcement agencies to continue transitioning to the more informative National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Use of NIBRS data, which will be the national standard for crime reporting by 2021, will provide additional transparency. Wray called for the country to “get beyond anecdotal evidence and collect more comprehensive data so that we have a clearer and more complete picture of crime in the United States.” He also noted the creation of the FBI’s database to collect law enforcement use-of-force statistics to facilitate an informed dialogue within communities.
“The more complete the data, the better we can inform, educate, and strengthen all of our communities,” Wray said.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2016-crime-statistics-released
