A New York Times factcheck to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address and Republican response by Senator Katie Britt of Alabama found that Britt's remarks were misleading about the nation's crime rates. “From our small towns to America’s most iconic city streets, life is getting more and more dangerous," Britt stated.
However, the New York Times notes, recent federal data does not support the notion that crime is on the rise. It's an oft-repeated error.  (As NPR reported last month, "Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. — even if Americans don't believe it.") But, the New York Times wrote, the F.B.I.’s annual crime report for 2022 showed that murders in the United States dropped just over 6% compared with the year earlier and, overall, violent crime also dipped. Available F.B.I. data for the first three quarters of 2023 shows that homicides were on track to drop significantly, among declines in other categories of violent and property crime.