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By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Incidents of violent crime in the United States fell by 3% last year, including the largest drop in murder in 20 years, while the number of hate crimes rose, the FBI said in an annual report released on Monday.
The report collects crime data from more than 16,000 state and local law enforcement agencies who collectively represent about 85% of the FBI's crime data reporting program.
The FBI said that murder and non-negligent manslaughter was down about 11.6% while reports of rape decreased by about 9.4%.
The drop in violent crime trends runs counter to claims by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has repeatedly attacked his Democratic rival Kamala Harris for the Biden administration's record on crime and safety and claimed without evidence that migrants who cross the border illegally are responsible for a rising tide of violent crime.
President Joe Biden, in a statement, praised the decline in crime, noting his administration's investments in public safety and executive actions on guns.
"While we have made great progress, we are not stopping now," Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor and district attorney in California, said separately. "I am committed to continuing our work to support local law enforcement, invest in proven crime prevention and community violence intervention, and address gun violence with commonsense gun safety laws."
Trump has said that if he's reelected, he would institute the death penalty for human traffickers and drug dealers.
He has also said he does not believe federal statistics like the FBI's report showing that violent crime trends are declining. FBI officials declined to comment when asked about Trump's claims in a call with reporters but said the agency's methodology has been consistent.
"This represents crimes that have been reported to police and to the FBI," the official said.
Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center looked at crime in the United States using two different sets of data from the Department of Justice.
It found that violent crime in the United States fell 49% between 1993 and 2022. However, violent crime rose sharply during the pandemic, with the murder rate spiking to its largest single year increase on record.
The number of hate crimes reported rose by 2% to 11,862 from 11,634, the report said.
Hate crimes have been on the rise in the United States for several years. The FBI last year reported a surge of 11.6% in 2021 from 2020, with the largest number of incidents spurred by bias against Black people.
Still, an FBI official cautioned that more law enforcement agencies reported hate crimes data to the FBI in 2023 compared with 2022, noting: "This may not reflect the true direction of hate crime."
Adjusting for those year-to-year fluctuations and using data from agencies with more consistent reporting, it found reported hate crimes fell less than 1% from 10,687 in 2022 to 10,627 in 2023, the official told reporters.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Mark Porter and Alistair Bell)
