Crime Statistics Reliability

The cluster debates the accuracy and trustworthiness of crime statistics, emphasizing that most crimes are underreported while murder rates are considered the only reliable metric due to low reporting optionality.

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Keywords

sfchronicle.com US IMO UNREPORTED statista.com www.bra I.e www.kgw en.m FBI crime crimes murder statistics stats reported numbers victim police victims

Sample Comments

mbfg Sep 6, 2022 View on HN

do you have statistics/links for this "crime not being lower, only reporting is lower" claim?

strangeattractr Jan 25, 2021 View on HN

Unreported crimes aren't factored into the stats you quote.

dleslie Apr 21, 2022 View on HN

You're assuming that crime is reported with the same reliability.

whatsgood22 Apr 21, 2015 View on HN

This is a bunch of anecdotal bullshit, crime rate statistics paint a much different picture

heliodor Jun 12, 2023 View on HN

Shouldn't you be looking for these numbers as a percent of total crime?

nullc Aug 12, 2025 View on HN

Crime stats do indeed have the obvious problem that when crime is pervasive people stop reporting because reporting just exacerbates the harm of the crime by wasting your time.One way to deal with this is to look only at murder stats, as there is a lot less reporting optionality there.Unfortunately, that method is biased by changes the ratio of murders to other crimes. And particularly when the hypothesis is that there is rampant lawlessness and property crime as a result of law enforceme

nradov Aug 23, 2024 View on HN

The only crime statistic that is pretty reliable is the murder rate. The vast majority of murder victims are found.For lesser crimes the numbers can't be trusted. Many victims don't bother to file reports because they're afraid or they don't believe that law enforcement will act. Some police forces even have an unofficial policy of discouraging victims from filing official reports in order to minimize workload and make their statistics look better.

Bud Nov 26, 2018 View on HN

Not really. Check the violent crime stats before making such claims.

whiddershins Dec 3, 2022 View on HN

You keep using bad data. Only look at murder rates. Murder is the only crime that is reliably recorded.https://www.statista.com/statistics/191223/reported-murder-a...

qingcharles Jun 26, 2025 View on HN

Where are these conviction rate statistics from? What are they measuring? (is it reporting of crime to a conviction on that crime?)