Current Trends

Current Crime Data is a sample of reported crime data from hundreds of law enforcement agencies nationwide which mimics national crime trends with as little lag and the most accuracy possible. Crime statistics are inexact, but sampling agencies in this way is a proven method for accurately measuring trends while waiting for national crime estimates published each year. Standardizing the offenses collected and time periods measured from hundreds of agencies makes it possible to evaluate trends up or down as they develop.

Not all crimes are reported to police, and the Current Crime Data can only measure those offenses that are reported to police. Crime data is inherently imprecise with frequent (usually small) variations between different data sources. This methodology is designed to ensure that crime trends are being captured accurately even if the exact figures reported either publicly by an agency or by the FBI may differ depending on the available data source. These figures represent reported crimes published by agencies, which may not represent the entirety of crimes in a city or county, if served by multiple agencies or when accounting for offenses that do not get reported to police. Agencies also can report crimes months after they occur, so figures for each agency are subject to change. The data collection methodology differs between cities, not every agency reports every offense type, and not every agency has complete data through the most recent reporting period. As such, ranking between cities or counties is imprecise and inadvisable, and users should be cautious when comparing crime counts for one location against another location’s counts.