Q&A of the Day – Is Florida’s Crime Rate Really at a 50-Year Low?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
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Today’s Entry: @brianmuddradio Is it true that Florida’s crime stats can’t be trusted?
Bottom Line: That note was sent along with a link to a recent Axios story entitled: Nearly half of Florida’s population excluded from state crime data. The story talks of how Governor DeSantis has frequently talked up Florida’s reported 50-year low crime rate but how that claim is dubious because Florida’s reporting to the federal database last year was incomplete. Quoting the article: Nearly half of the state's population is excluded from 2021 crime figures estimated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), according to data provided to Axios by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit newsroom covering criminal justice. The data gap means it's nearly impossible to compare Florida's crime rate to other states or current crime statistics with data from past years. So, what’s real here? Is the claim potentially false that Florida’s crime rate is at 50-year low? Is the information we were provided by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in the annual Uniform Crime Report unreliable due to under reporting?
I covered this topic last December when the annual report was released. As I mentioned at the time... Florida’s recent Uniform Crime Report showed crime – of all types – was yet again lower over the past year leading to a fresh 50-year crime rate low across the state. (with the caveat that only about 60% of the state was reporting this year due to software changes which led to some jurisdictions not reporting to the feds). That included violent crime falling by 4.3% over the past year with property crime falling by 10.7%. Specific to the most heinous crimes of all – murders – Florida saw 1,110 of them over the past year in the 36 reporting counties, which did include two of the three most populous in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. That was a decline of 183 murders, or just over 14%, in the reporting counties. That’s great news as murders declined at a rate that was far better than other types of crimes. In South Florida, it was a mixed bag. Murder rates in Palm Beach County were 15% lower than the state average, however in Miami-Dade they were 58% above state average – one of the highest rates in the state.
The point is two-fold. First, this isn’t new news. The most recent annual report was released over seven months ago now. Florida’s touted having had a 50-year low crime rate since the initial report dropped. All that’s new is the national reporting on it based on DeSantis’ claims on the campaign trail as part of an effort to discredit his claims. And as I noted when it was first reported last December only about 60% of the state was reporting, and the reason the balance of the state didn’t report wasn’t due to some type of local or state coverup of crime information. It was due to the FBI’s database changing the technology used by local and state law enforcement agencies to report into them which required changes at the state and local level. Not all agencies had adapted by the time of the annual report. And there’s another key layer to this conversation.
As one who has investigated and reported on Florida’s annual crime report over the past two decades, I can point you to the important additional context. One need look no further than the previous year’s report. Florida’s crime rate had dropped for 13 consecutive years, with agencies across the state fully reporting, preceding the most recent report. Florida’s crime rate was already at a 48-year low preceding the most recent report. It wasn’t as though Florida’s crime rate had been trending higher or had even been flat, and then all of the sudden, there’s a 50-year low with much of the state not reporting. That context is key to this conversation. And that’s why it was the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, not Governor DeSantis who first reported that crime had reached a 50-year low in Florida. The facts are so clear on this that even Politifact has backed the state and Governor DeSantis on this – quoting them: DeSantis' talking point is accurate.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement shares crime data from local law enforcement agencies with the FBI for its Uniform Crime Reporting program. The most recent state data available is from 2021. That year, Florida had a crime rate of about 1,952 crimes per 100,000 residents — nearly a 10% decrease from 2020.
That 2021 crime rate is the lowest recorded in Florida since 1971.
Now, to be literal, what we know is that as of the most recent reporting 60% of the state of Florida has experienced a 50-year low crime rate with 14-consecutive years of a declining crime rate. 40% of the state has experienced at least 48-year low crime with at least 13-consecutive years of a declining crime rate. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. Those are the facts. The rest of the stories you might see calling Florida’s crime rate into question are noise.