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free mobile video app, or any time on c-span.org. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. morning is jeff asher a crime analyst and consultant and cofounder of ah analytics. i want to read a headline from your website, crime in 2023, murder plummeted, property crime fell nationally. this is a contrast to three and four americans who believed crime rose this year. here is from nbc news, a look at homicides in major cities. in new york city 11% down. 13% down and chicago, down 11% in houston and the list goes on.

in phoenix, philadelphia 21% and dallas also down 12%. why is it that americans feel that crime rose but the numbers show a different story? guest: that's an excellent question. it's a complicated question. it's not so easy to point to one factor. the starting factor is that we don't have good crime data, timely crime data that would allow people to understand what the answer is. it is an answerable question, comment either went up or down. in the same way you can tell who won the world series or the super bowl. you can't really do that with crime. when we ask people whether the trends they rely on anecdotes because they lack solid data and

when they rely on anecdotes it leads to misremembering, bias toward anecdotes and unable to weigh what happened this year versus what happened last year. chris hayes on twitter mentioned the media does not cover the planes that land. there is never a story that says there was no robbery yesterday, there are only stories when they happen. you're asking people to take incomplete data and their memory of what they heard and make a judgment on whether or not something happened or did not happen. that makes it really difficult. and finally, 92% of republicans

feel crime got worse last year. 58% of democrats which is still a high percentage of democrats. it's not only partisan but is becoming a partisan issue rather than a factual issue. host: there is incomplete data and not timely data. how do you do your work? how do you get these numbers and how do you do your analysis? guest: for the murder data we keep a dashboard. it depends on how frequently they are updating. we have done the analysis to show that if you have 50 cities of data, you will mimic the national trend puppy off by three-5%. if you have 150 cities data,

then you're talking about a 1-2 .5% miss. we are in a position to estimate the national trend with pretty good accuracy. in our 200 city sample murder is down 12.5%. if you put your margin of error between 10-14% you are safe in assuming we saw a double-digit decline in murder and murder does not go up and down much. it's usually about 3%. the largest one-year decrease is a 9% decrease in 1996. the largest increase was 30% in 2020.

since see this kind of decrease is a historically large decrease on top of 2020, 2021. host: what do you attribute to the decline? guest: again, a tough question. it's complicated. criminologists are not sure why murder declined in the 90's. to answer why this happened is still pretty early and analytic terms. the most compelling explanation is the pandemic faded in 2022 into the background and that removed a lot of stresses for most americans. covid-19 has not gone away but the relationship with the viruses change. it led to significantly less

stress. it led to the types of philanthropic programming that was put on hold. city and state government services and hiring started again. in a way they had not in 2020 and 2021. you can plausibly argue that police departments that were not able to police in certain ways were able to do things they were used to again. what we are seeing is a return to almost normal life and part of that is a decrease due to the pandemic. host: we are doing it by region so eastern (202) 748-8000,

mountain pacific (202) 748-8001. what is that like in your city what is your perception of crime in your city and around the country? do people always think crime is higher than it actually is? guest: it didn't used to be like this. in the 90's when the polling started, people were seeing that crime was going down, especially violent crime. crime is poorly defined. do you mean crime as major crimes that the fbi reports? do you mean violent crime? do you mean murder? which make a tiny slice of crime but takes on an outsized effect because it has the highest societal cost. in the 90's americans were good

at it. when the level leveled off at 2000, it was hard to tell. given all the challenges, their bass response was that it went up. you started to see partisanship in 2000 under republican president democrats said that crime went up. and then it switched and the obama years and then switched again in the trump years. nothing like we have seen today where there is an enormous partisan gap. host: 55% believe that crime has gone up in their local area.

what do you think of those numbers? guest: if murder goes down and 75% of cities, that doesn't mean it's happening everywhere. there are places like washington dc and memphis where you see big increases in crime, especially in murder and gun violence. for the most part, what we see with murder in the quarterly data which they released in december is that there was widespread decline. big cities, small cities, rural, suburban, everywhere is seeing a decline in crime except auto theft. the feeling of crime going up or down has been the paramount motivator and answering that type of question. i would love to see the question

better defined. i would love to see a better understanding of where people are when they are answering. some of those people will be right but based on the preliminary data are going to be wrong. host: pat in camden, new jersey. good morning. caller: good morning, good morning america. i live near philadelphia. i lived in camden, new jersey during the crack error that had many problems. my understanding is that police need to submit their stats, is that happening? every day, every local news channel shows everything a black

boy does wrong. i just retired last year and i'm very interested in how we can make our inner city safe. host: alright pat, we will let you it's at the door. guest: i was say the police department does report crime so the figures we are talking about come from the officially reported crime statistics. there is a separate survey which shows the share of crimes that are unreported and helps to deal with that. we know that crime is underreported. we know certain crimes, especially sex offenses, property crimes are more systemically underreported. what we are relying on here is

police reported crime but were talking about murder and homicide. murder and homicide, yeah you will probably have a couple that are not properly reported. but we should be getting nearly 100% reporting on those types of incidents. measuring our trend using. means we are not worrying about underreporting, getting better, worse or whether police are properly reporting shoplifting incidents. we are talking about the heinous tragedy of murder which gives us a lot more confidence from a data perspective that the figures we are talking about is accurate. host: mike in brooklyn. caller: hi, good morning.

with illegal immigrants, in brooklyn if you walk out with the necklace her earrings and you're not watching out closely, you will get ripped off by an illegal immigrant. every time they get a call about ripping off the jewelry you get redirected. host: how do you know they are illegal immigrants? caller: because i talk to them. they say they are coming in from the cartels. host: you are speaking to the people committing these crimes? caller: the people at the shelter. what is the trend there. host: let's take up this question because there's an association between crime and illegal immigrants, do you have

statistics? guest: it's difficult especially with property crimes, with there being a 20% clearance rate. it's difficult to say the nature of perpetrators across the board. when we talk about murder, the vast majority are not illegal immigrants. i live in new orleans and i'm not familiar with this single victim or perpetrator that was an illegal immigrant in new orleans. there were a lot of american citizens that were victims or perpetrators.

i think the numbers being reported by police should not be affected by the arrest status of the perpetrator. host: david in deerfield, illinois. caller: good morning. i think the statistics are questionable because i live outside of chicago and you have to look at the number of arrests, convictions. if we are not arresting and convicting people they never get into statistics. i think those numbers are lower than they were five years ago. if we are not convicting people,

i would assume they're not getting into the final statistics. to say that things are better is something not a lot of people in chicago would agree with and it's more from everyday life then looking at statistics. people watching smash and grabs and normals and half the story in the main shopping district are gone. they are closed down and gone. carjackings all the time. our wonderful governor approved no bail release of criminals. then you look back at the summer during covid where there was general lawlessness, no arrests

being made. the laws were not even being enforced. host: we will take your comments. guest: two your first comment, the status of the arrest or prosecution has no effect on whether the police department reports numbers. if the theft is reported to the police, they report the figures regardless of what happens after the events occurred. from a statistical standpoint whether or not arrests are being made are prosecutors have prosecuted them it's not important for statistical purposes. with your second comment, a 10-15% decline a murderous great. 600 murders in chicago is not good. i would argue that one can

acknowledge a positive trend while still acknowledging that the problem exists and there is a lot of work to get to the point where things are acceptable. even in 2014 where the u.s. reported the lowest murder rates it has ever reported, one could still argue that the murder rate was still too high and we still had work to do. just because the trend is positive people should not be except that is the final trend or things are perfect. and you answered the question of why do people think crime is up? you have the expansion of viral videos that things like tiktok with the expansion to access to social media where you can see a viral smash and grab a destroyer. you can see a beating on the

subway and that will impact your impression of what is happening citywide in a way that 10, 15 years ago your impression would have not been impacted. the expansion of access to anecdotal or viral videos is making it so it's hard to understand the trend. host: a viewer says, my local home depot locked up the items on three aisles, is that a sign of decreasing crime? guest: it could be a sign that they take shoplifting seriously. it could be a sign -- i don't think it's related to crime necessarily. it's not a relative to the trends or the degree to which the company is taking product loss more seriously.

in a way that they may not have before. especially with shoplif ting and retail theft we go by anecdote given the data quality challenges of the crime without more info on where the store is in what the trend is, you can't say whether or not crime is going up or down. host: eric and ocean county, new jersey. caller: yes, i take exception with some of your comments regarding the comparison from this year to last year. what i would like to see is give us an average crime rate for the years 2017-2019. mark twain

had something humorous about statistics. you seem to be emphasizing perception. counterbalancing that is the fact that crimes involving shoplifting, $900 or less are not even crimes anymore. so statistics could not be including anything we would deem as shoplifting. my final comment as i would love to see a study about crime rates in philadelphia, chicago and new york under the latest district attorneys and the crime recidivism taking place. guest: if you take crime big picture, the violent crime rate was lower than it was in 2017,

2019. in those file in 2021. that was because there was less people out so there was less shoplifting. the 2023 figures that we have preliminary data on, if the data is correct, we would see lower crime numbers then in 2017-2019. the official figure of the violent crime rate might drop the lowest since the 1960's. the murder rate is still higher than it was in 2019 but has come down significantly from where it

was in 2020, 2021 but is likely higher. what we are talking about is the trend and we can be encouraged by the trend and no the decline in murder was historic relative to previous years while acknowledging it is not good enough if it was odd or below the 2019 level in you're still talking about memphis and washington dc where there still exists the countertrend. i'm not trying to say everything is rosy but we can acknowledge the data and if we talk about the gallup poll which people say that it is getting worse, it's wrong.

even though that it is not perfect, it is improving. host: here's another comment, south bend, indiana is the most dangerous city in indiana. the leadership is extremely liberal and any connection between crime and political leadership? guest: as far as we know, not that i'm aware of. i don't have the crime rates of indiana towns off the top of my head. i will say from the quarterly numbers we have from the fbi, finally crime in rural counties are down 8.3 percent, suburban counties down 6%, cities a million or over are down. property crime you see the exact same trends, down 17% in rural

counties, 6% in suburban counties. one difference you are seeing is auto theft in bigger cities is surging in a way that it is not in small towns and counties and that is due to the ease in which kia's and hyundais have become stealable. in cities, there has been a 12-13% decline. it's not just big cities run by democratic mayors. it's not just red states or blue states. the trend we see is nationwide. i'm looking forward to having more data, i'm looking forward to the fourth quarter data and completing the murder picture for this year.

but everything we have preliminarily shows a widespread decline. host: where can people follow you and your company in these numbers? do you report them? guest: we have a year to date murder dashboard age data latex.com. find the dashboard. i am on sub stock that i try to contribute weekly based on how well my kids have behaved. where some of that analysis visited. the point of the dashboard is to write as much broad data as possible and what it means and applies for national trends because the whole goal is to

understand what is happening nationally. host: we have eddie in florida. good morning, is it eddie? caller: it is letty. i have a thing to say about fox news, they do a loop of smash and grab us. with the murder rate, the first thing we need to talk about cosby guns. about 15 years ago i tried to get a gun and it took me three days. i decided not to get it, because i love my husband and i don't want to shoot him. i need we need to get that straightened out which is the gun issue. guest: one of the challenges of

understanding why murder when not been 2020 is we had this huge influx of gun sales at the start of the pandemic and i did a study with rob arthur that looked at tent cities, the share of traffic stops that involve the firearm. before this murder surge started you saw an increase in the share of incidents that had a firearm present the suggested the people were carrying firearms more often at the start of the pandemic. we have seen based on the fbi background checks and apparent decline in firearm sales. it is plausible that slowly, this influx of fire arms is declining.

it's not like we saw this influx of guns and then there were murderers. i am cognizant of the point but i'm not sure if that fully explains every thing regarding the trends we are seeing. host: what are the trends for mass shootings? guest: they make up a very small share of overall shootings but from data suggesting that the share of mass shootings is increasing. may be going from 3-4% of shooting victims in mass shootings to six-six .5%. as we see shooting victims go down we are not seeing that for mass shootings.

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and the house on january 9. both chambers face upcoming federal budget deadlines to avoid a shutdown, the first on january 19, and together on february 2. >> the subcommittees are ready to do the work but we are waiting on the other chamber to come forward on a number we can agree on. >> senator mcconnell and i will figure out the best way to get this done quickly. announcer: followed the progress on the c-span networks, c-span now, or anytime online at c-span.org. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] announcer: a conversation now on defense budgeting and building the nation's military to meet current and future threats with roger wicker, democratic congress number joe courtney, and the ceo of general electric. they were part of the annual reagan national defense for in simi