It should also be noted that US crime statistics improved a lot starting in the early 70s. Federal laws changed which both forced more crime that local law enforcement knew about, but didn't say anything about, to be recorded for statistical purposes. And created a US Census program to monitor crime rates. And the reason for this federal law was that it was certain that crime prior to 1970 was under reported in the US.
Is this officially recorded crime or victim survey statistics?
If it's officially recorded, it's always very difficult on the face to know how much in the growth of crime rates in that 60s to 90s period is increased reporting, and better police administration to record things, rather than underlying actual changes in crime levels.
They're officially recorded crime statistics. Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI.
The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s National Incident-Based Reporting System went live with test submissions in 1989; a handbook for the system was published in 2002; and as of 2010, only 43% of reporting agencies were fully certified. Only 32 state UCR programs were enrolled, and of those, only 15 were submitting all of their data. The Crime Index that was started in 1960 was suspended in 2004, and the Summary Reporting System was retired, fully replaced by NIBRS, in 2021. I don't know where enrollment or usage stands today, but The Marshal Project claims that, as of reporting year 2021, NIBRS was still missing data from 7,000 agencies, including the NYPD and LAPD (basically the entire state of California, in fact).
So anybody who claims that crime in the US is worse today than it was in decades past literally
couldn't know what they're talking about. (All that said, it's still worth noting that crime rates in the data we
do have are falling. The data in that table above are incomplete, but afaik we have no reason to think they're wrong, for what they do cover. The stories I've read of failures to report incidents properly, such as in Boston, haven't included falsified data, to my knowledge. I doubt all ~18,000 agencies have been subject to scrutiny, though. Could be all sorts of shenanigans going on.)
Many police departments have not adopted the feds’ new reporting system, muddling the picture about national crime trends.
www.themarshallproject.org