"... federal and national research institutions published their findings on pandemic crime rates. The data showed some alarming trends, such as a 9.2 percent increase in auto theft and a nearly 30 percent jump in homicide deaths.
However, comprehensive research from the Department of Justice found that the total number of violent crimes — including rape and sexual assault, robbery, property crime, and auto theft — decreased by 22 percent. The earliest reports on crime during the height of the pandemic came from media outlets that conducted surface-level data analyses on their own. One research review published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice showed that crime, overall, was exhibiting a downward trend.
The review also critiqued media outlets like The Washington Post and CNN for utilizing limited metrics to compare early-pandemic crime rates to those in previous weeks, months, and years. This review asserted that the outlets employed an unreliable variety of data and anecdotal evidence."
