Reported violent crime in the U.S. dropped 1.7% last year, topped by a 6.1% decrease in murder and non-negligent manslaughter, the FBI reported on Monday.
Among other violent crimes, reported robberies increased 1.3 percent, aggravated assaults dropped 1.1 percent, and reported rapes were down 5.4 percent.
Overall, an estimated 1,232,428 violent crime offenses were committed in 2022, a rate of 369.8 violent crimes per 100,000 population, down from the 2021 rate of 377.6.
The violent crime rate as measured by the FBI neared 400 per 100,000 population both in 2016 and 2020 but has dropped since the first year of the COVID pandemic.
Because so many crimes go unreported to law enforcement, the FBI's results differ from those reported last month in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which is based on interviews with a representative sample of Americans.
NCVS estimated 2,766,770 violent crimes last year, more than twice the FBI's number, even when the category of "simple assault" was excluded. By NCVS' estimate, the total was way up from 1,555,110 in 2021 (excluding simple assaults).
In a contrast to the decline in violent crime, reported property crimes last year increased 7.1%, led by a 10.9% rise in motor vehicle theft.
For the first time, the FBI provided data on carjackings, reporting that such incidents increased 8.1% last year, from 23,500 to 25,400. At least one weapon was involved in an estimated 22,700 carjackings in 2022.
Larceny thefts jumped 7.8%, while burglaries and breaking-and-entering remained static.
An estimated 6,513,829 property crimes were committed in 2022, an offense rate of 1,954.4 per 100,000 population, up from the 2021 offense rate of 1,832.3.
The property crime trend reported by NCVS was more consistent with the FBI report. Including crimes not reported to law enforcement, NCVS estimated 13,373,330 offenses last year, up from11,682,060 in 2021.
Both motor vehicle thefts and burglaries increased, in NCVS' estimation.
The new FBI report indicates that the agency is making some progress in dealing with the problem of missing data due to the gradual transition to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS), a much more detailed report on crime incidents than was provided the old FBI "summary" report.
Although NIBRS was created in 1989, only since the beginning of 2021 has the FBI has required local aw enforcement agencies to submit annual data in that format.
Still, local policing agencies submitting NIBRS data for 2022 covered only about 77 percent of the U.S. population. More than 2,400 agencies were allowed to provide numbers under the summary reporting system, which includes only a total number of reported crimes in various categories.
Every agency in a jurisdiction of 1,000,000 or more population submitted data for 2022, although the FBI did not provide a breakdown of how many of these agencies provided NIBRS data.
For the first time, the FBI reported data on hate crimes and assaults on law enforcement officers on the same day that it released basic crime numbers.
The number of reported hate crimes increased from 10,840 to 11,634 last year. The total is incomplete because many police departments do not report all possible hate crimes.
Assaults of law enforcement officers increased 1.8 percent from an estimated 100,300 inidents in 2021 to an estimated 102,100 in 2022.,