U.S. flags fly outside FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. The FBI’s latest national crime report, released in late September, shows an overall 3% decline in violent crime in 2023 compared with the previous year. Property crime also was down nationwide, dropping by 2.4% in 2023 compared with the previous year. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Violent crime and property crime in the United States dropped in 2023, continuing a downward trend following higher rates of crime during the pandemic, according to the FBI’s latest national crime report.

Murders and intentional manslaughter, known as non-negligent manslaughter, fell by 11.6% from 2022. Property crime dropped by 2.4%.

Overall, FBI data shows that violent crime fell by 3%.

Violent crime has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential race, with former President Donald Trump claiming that crime has been “through the roof” under the Biden administration.

On the campaign trail, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has cited findings from a different source — the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey — to argue that crime is out of control.

While the FBI’s data reflects only crimes reported to the police, the victimization survey is based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and includes both reported and unreported crimes. Interviewees are asked whether they reported the crime to the police. But the survey does not include murder data and only tracks crimes against individuals aged 12 and older.

The victimization survey, released in mid-September, shows that the violent crime victimization rate rose from 16.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 22.5 per 1,000 in 2023. The report also notes that the 2023 rate is statistically similar to the rate in 2019, when Trump was in office.

Despite what some politicians say, crime rates are decreasing

Many crime data experts consider both sources trustworthy. But the agencies track different trends, measure crimes differently and collect data over varying time frames. Unlike the victimization survey, the FBI’s data is largely based on calls for service or police reports.

Still, most crimes go unreported, which means the FBI’s data is neither entirely accurate nor complete. The victimization surveys released throughout the peak years of the pandemic were particularly difficult to conduct, which is a key reason why, according to some experts, the FBI and the survey may show different trends.

As a result, these differences, which are often unknown or misunderstood, make it easier for anyone — including politicians — to manipulate findings to support their agendas.

Political candidates at the national, state and local levels on both sides of the aisle have used crime statistics in their campaigns this year, with some taking credit for promising trends and others using different numbers to flog their opponents. But it’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions about crime trends or attribute them to specific policies.

“There’s never any single reason why crime trends move one way or another,” said Ames Grawert, a crime data expert and senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.

“When an answer is presented that maybe makes intuitive sense or a certain political persuasion, it’s all too natural to jump to that answer. The problem is that that is just not how crime works,” Grawert told Stateline.

At an August rally in Philadelphia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said: “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”

During Trump’s first three years in office, the violent crime rate per 100,000 people actually decreased each year, according to the FBI, from 376.5 in 2017, to 370.8 in 2018, to 364.4 in 2019.

It wasn’t until 2020 that the rate surged to 386.3, the highest under Trump, which is when the country experienced the largest one-year increase in murders.

Walz’s comments overlook the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. And despite the increase that year, the violent crime rate in Trump’s final year remained slightly lower than in the last year of President Barack Obama’s administration. In 2016, the rate was 386.8 per 100,000 people.

Following the release of the FBI’s annual crime report last month, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican running for attorney general in North Carolina, shared and later deleted a retweet on X that falsely claimed the FBI’s data showed zero homicides in Los Angeles and New Orleans last year. In fact, FBI data showed that the Los Angeles Police Department reported 325 homicides, while New Orleans police reported 198 in 2023.

Voters worry

Crime has emerged as a top issue on voters’ minds.

A Gallup poll conducted in March found that nearly 80% of Americans worry about crime and violence “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” ranking it above concerns such as the economy and illegal immigration. In another Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described crime in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

Crime data usually lags by at least a year, depending on the agency or organization gathering and analyzing the statistics. But the lack of accurate, real-time crime data from official sources, such as federal or state agencies, may leave some voters vulnerable to political manipulation, according to some crime and voter behavior experts.

There are at least three trackers collecting and analyzing national and local crime data that aim to close the gap in real-time reporting. Developed by the Council on Criminal Justice, data consulting firm AH Datalytics and NORC at the University of Chicago, these trackers all show a similar trend of declining crime rates.

“We live in a world of sound bites, and people aren’t taking the time to digest information and fact check,” Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said in an interview with Stateline. “The onus is on the voter.”

Crime trends and limitations

In 2020, when shutdowns in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic kept people at home, homicides surged by nearly 30% — the largest single-year increase since the FBI began tracking crime.

In 2022, violent crime had fallen back to near pre-pandemic levels, and the FBI data showed a continued decline last year. The rate of violent crime dropped from about 377 incidents per 100,000 people in 2022, to around 364 per 100,000 in 2023, slightly below the 2019 rate.

Politicians love to cite crime data. It’s often wrong.

The largest cities, those with populations of at least 1 million, saw the biggest drop in violent crime — nearly 7% — while cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 saw a slight 0.3% increase.

Rape incidents decreased by more than 9% and aggravated assault by nearly 3%. Burglary and larceny-theft decreased by 8% and 4%, respectively.

Motor vehicle theft, however, rose by 12% in 2023 compared with 2022, the highest rate of car theft since 2007, with 319 thefts per 100,000 people.

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some crime-data experts caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It can be sort of simplistic to look at national trends. You have to allow the space for nuance and context about what’s happening at the local level too,” said Grawert, of the Brennan Center.

Some crime experts and politicians have criticized the FBI’s latest report, pointing out that not all law enforcement agencies have submitted their crime statistics.

The FBI is transitioning participating agencies to a new reporting system called the National Incident-Based Reporting System or NIBRS. The FBI mandated that the transition, which began in the late 1980s, be completed by 2021. This requirement resulted in a significant drop in agency participation for that year’s report because some law enforcement agencies couldn’t meet the deadline.

In 2022, the FBI relaxed the requirement, allowing agencies to use both the new and older reporting systems. Since the 2021 mandate, more law enforcement agencies have transitioned to the new reporting system.

Reporting crime data to the FBI is voluntary, and some departments may submit only a few months’ worth of data.

Although the FBI’s latest report covers 94% of the U.S. population, only 73% of all law enforcement agencies participated, using either reporting system, according to Stateline’s analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data. This means that 5,926 agencies, or 27%, did not report any data to the FBI.

The majority of the missing agencies are likely smaller rural departments that don’t participate due to limited resources and staff, according to some crime data experts.

But participation in the FBI’s crime reporting program has steadily increased over time, particularly after the drop in 2021. Many of the law enforcement agencies in the country’s largest cities submitted data for 2023, and every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more provided a full year of data, according to the FBI’s report.

This article is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

A 9 mm “ghost gun” pistol build kit with a commercial slide and barrel with a polymer frame is displayed in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. More than a dozen states, including some battleground states, debated and enacted a variety of firearms regulations addressing storage requirements, gun-free zones, bans on firearm purchase tracking and permitless carry. (Carolyn Kaster/The Associated Press)

The deadliest school shooting in Georgia history occurred earlier this month when a 14-year-old gunman, armed with a military-style rifle, killed two students and two teachers and injured nine others at Apalachee High School in Winder, a city about an hour northeast of Atlanta.

And on Sunday, former President Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI described as an apparent assassination attempt at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida — just nine weeks after surviving another attempt on his life.

Gun policy has been a topic of debate in America for decades, and its prominence has increased as gun-related deaths and mass shootings have risen nearly every year since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in the United States.

Many Americans despair of ever taming the epidemic, but a new report says certain laws can make a difference.

The report, published in July by Rand, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that minimum age requirements for purchasing firearms appear to reduce suicides among young people. Additionally, it indicated that laws aimed at reducing children’s access to stored guns may also lower rates of firearm suicides, unintentional shootings and firearm homicides among youth.

This is the fourth time that Rand has released the report, “The Science of Gun Policy,” since 2018. Earlier editions examined the effectiveness of other gun regulations, such as background checks and concealed carry laws, and their impact on outcomes such as crime and suicide.

The “Science of Gun Policy” report examines laws individually. But a separate Rand study published in July, this one in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Network Open, explores the combined effects of multiple state-level gun laws, including background checks, minimum age requirements, waiting periods, child access restrictions, concealed carry and stand your ground laws.

“We should try to be looking at policies jointly, because individually, each one may have a small effect, but if you start layering these restrictions on each other, they may start to really make a difference,” Terry Schell, the study’s lead author and a senior behavioral scientist at Rand, told Stateline. “That is worth thinking about.”

The study found that states with the most restrictive gun policies had a 20% lower firearm mortality rate compared with states with the most permissive laws, suggesting that comprehensive policy approaches may be more effective than individual policies in curbing gun violence.

“There should be some hope that there is a policy combination that could drive the firearm death rate down,” Schell said.

A deadly year so far

The Georgia school shooting marked the 30th mass killing in the United States this year, defined as an attack in which four or more people, excluding the perpetrator, are killed, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University. At least 131 people have died in these killings so far.

Mass shootings that occur close to election seasons often have a significant impact on the public’s perception of guns, according to gun policy experts. But much of the discussion and debate surrounding firearms has been clouded by partisan rhetoric and money, said Warren Eller, an associate professor of public management at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“[Gun policy is] going to play a larger role, at least in the dialogue around it –– whether or not it’s meaningful dialogue, I think, is something very different,” Eller said in a phone interview with Stateline.

This year, more than a dozen states enacted a variety of new gun laws, including measures related to storage requirements, gun-free zones, bans on firearm purchase tracking and permitless carry.

Following the deadly shooting at Apalachee High School, both Republican and Democratic Georgia state lawmakers have proposed various measures to curb gun violence.

Georgia’s House speaker, Republican Rep. Jon Burns, wrote in a letter to the House Republican Caucus that lawmakers will consider new policies during the 2025 legislative session to promote student mental health, evaluate technologies to detect guns and encourage safe gun storage.

“While House Republicans have already made significant investments to strengthen security in our schools, increase access to mental healthcare, and keep our students safe, I am committed to not only continuing this work but pursuing additional policies to help ensure a tragedy like this never happens in our state again,” Burns wrote in the letter.

Burns’ proposals, however, fall short of Democratic demands for measures such as universal background checks and a red flag law, which would allow police or loved ones to petition a court to prevent an at-risk individual from purchasing or possessing a firearm.

In February, the Georgia House approved a bill to create a state income tax credit of up to $300 for purchasing gun safes, trigger locks, other security devices or instructional courses on safe firearm handling. This bill did not advance past the Senate, but a similar Senate bill that exempts gun safes and other safety devices from state sales tax went into effect in July.

Two other gun-related bills also took effect in July. The first law bans firearm purchase tracking, while the second law established a tax holiday for guns and related items.

A special panel of Georgia state senators also convened several times this year to explore potential laws aimed at safely locking up firearms and keeping them out of the hands of children.

Pushback against gun measures

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents much of the national firearm industry, argues that universal background checks are ineffective and that they don’t keep firearms from reaching criminals. The foundation also contends that universal background checks would require a national registry of gun owners, which they fear could lead to confiscation.

Many of the existing red flag laws, the group argues, lack sufficient due process protections. The group encourages safe firearm storage but opposes laws mandating specific storage requirements, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the justices ruled that trigger locks, which render firearms nonfunctional, violate the Second Amendment.

Above all, the group advocates for stricter enforcement of existing laws and emphasizes that mental health should be a primary focus in addressing gun violence.

“We can’t have no-bail policies. We can’t have ‘defund the police.’ … We need to hold people accountable for their criminal actions,” Lawrence Keane, the organization’s senior vice president and general counsel, said in an interview with Stateline. “We believe that a lot of these high-profile, tragic incidents are at bottom about mental health.”

Mental health is often cited as a major factor contributing to gun violence. Although it may play a significant role, aligning specific mental health diagnoses with policy solutions is difficult, according to Eller, of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Much of the gun violence in the United States stems from economic crime, Eller said in the interview, but many policy discussions focus narrowly on school shootings and assault weapons. Those issues should be addressed, he said, but they represent a small percentage of gun violence in this country.

Since 1982, there have been at least 24 mass shootings in U.S. schools, defined as incidents in which four or more people are killed, according to a database maintained by Mother Jones, a nonprofit news magazine. These school shootings account for about 16% of the 151 mass shootings that have occurred in the U.S. during this period.

This article?is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

An FBI Evidence Response Team investigator walks behind a crime scene. The FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report, which was released in early June, suggests that violent crime dropped by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2023. (Ann Arbor Miller/Associated Press)

Violent crime in the United States dropped significantly in the first quarter of 2024 compared with the same period last year, according to the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report released last month.

The FBI’s data, collected from nearly 12,000 law enforcement agencies representing about 77% of the country’s population, suggests violent crime dropped by 15% compared with the first quarter of 2023.

The data, which covers reported crimes from January to March, shows a 26.4% decrease in murders, a 25.7% decrease in rapes, a 17.8% decrease in robberies, and a 12.5% decrease in aggravated assaults. Reported property crime also fell by 15.1%.

Nevertheless, the widespread public perception that crime is rising — a perception reinforced by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and many other GOP candidates — could figure prominently in November’s election. And state legislative and gubernatorial candidates from both parties likely also will cite crime statistics on the stump.

In a Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described the crime problem in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious. This is the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.

In May, Trump wrongly called FBI data showing a decline in crime “fake numbers.” This month, he erroneously claimed that the FBI’s crime statistics exclude 30% of cities, including the “biggest and most violent.”

He could have been referring to the fact some departments couldn’t report data in 2021 because the FBI switched data reporting systems, but experts say the overall numbers remain valid.

President Joe Biden has also used crime statistics for political gain. In a May campaign email, Biden said that Trump “oversaw the largest increase in murder in U.S. history.” While this is not entirely inaccurate — the country did see the largest one-year increase in murders in 2020 — it omits context regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.

Beshear vetoes sweeping anti-crime bill along with parts of state budget

The latest FBI crime statistics align with other early data from 2024. In May, the Major Cities Chiefs Association released first-quarter data from a survey of 68 major metropolitan police departments showing a 17% drop in murders compared with the same period last year.

The FBI’s latest data is preliminary and unaudited, which means it will change as more law enforcement agencies refine their numbers throughout the year. National crime data is incomplete, as it only includes crimes reported to police, and not every law enforcement agency participates in the FBI’s crime reporting program.

Despite the data’s limitations, some criminologists and crime data experts say the data is reliable. Some say the FBI’s data likely overstates the decreases, suggesting the drop in violent crime is likely less dramatic but still trending downward.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty as to the accuracy of the data, so it matches but probably overstates what the trends are,” Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm that specializes in crime data, told Stateline in an interview. “In theory, everything will get more accurate as the year goes on.”

Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some criminologists caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.

“It looks good for the nation as a whole, but even with these great reductions, there are cities in the United States that have likely experienced increases that bucked the trend,” Charis Kubrin, a criminology, law and society professor at the University of California, Irvine, told Stateline.

The average American’s understanding of crime and crime statistics is heavily skewed by media coverage that focuses largely on when crimes are committed and by misleading political rhetoric, according to criminologists and crime data experts.

Instead of relying on statistics, which can feel impersonal, people tend to cling to anecdotes that resonate more emotionally. Politicians take advantage of this, Dan Gardner, author of the book “Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear,” told Stateline.

“If you are a political operative, capitalizing on fear of crime is incredibly easy to do,” Gardner said.

Telling a tragic story and framing it in a way so that voters feel they or their families could become victims of similar crimes unless they vote for a specific politician is a common, highly effective tactic, he added.

This use of fear as a motivator can drive people to the polls, Gardner said, but it also distorts public perception of crime.

“It’s a lousy way to understand the reality of personal safety and society, but it’s a very compelling form of marketing,” Gardner said.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, released a report this month urging police and the federal government to provide more timely crime data. The report emphasizes that crime data, especially national data, often lags up to a year, which hampers public understanding of crime trends and limits officials’ ability to make informed policy decisions to proactively address public safety issues.

“We need to accelerate improvements in our [crime] data,” John Roman, a senior fellow and the director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, told Stateline. Roman also is the chair of the Council on Criminal Justice’s Crime Trends Working Group. “The democratization of this data is really critical to more effective policy and programming.”

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and?part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network. ?Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

A drag performer, Champagne Monroe, reads the children’s book “Rainbow Fish” to a group of children and parents at the public library’s Drag Queen Story Hour in Mobile, Alabama. Much of the drag-related legislation under consideration across states aims to prohibit minors from attending performances and reclassify establishments that host drag shows as adult entertainment spaces, subjecting them to stricter business regulations. (Dan Anderson/The Associated Press)

Drag performances used to be found mostly in the confines of nightlife venues such as clubs and bars.

But drag has stepped into the daylight, with elaborately costumed and made-up performers appearing at library readings and kid-friendly brunches, and a newfound visibility for gender-bending entertainment and self-expression.

“Drag now versus 15 years ago is like night and day,” said Dr. Lady J, a Cleveland-area performer with a doctoral dissertation in drag history. “Drag is so mainstream now. … I grew up in a world where drag queens were this mysterious thing that maybe existed in New York or San Francisco.”

?‘Adult-oriented business’ bill advances in Kentucky legislature, foes call it ‘anti drag’

The growing visibility has made drag performances a target for conservative legislators. Although polls show most Americans don’t support laws to restrict drag performances, lawmakers in states including Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and West Virginia have considered or enacted legislation this session that would prohibit businesses from allowing minors to attend drag shows. Several would impose stricter business regulations on establishments that host drag shows or would ban “obscene live conduct” at state universities.

Supporters of these bills say they are designed to protect children from entertainment that is not appropriate for them, not to target the transgender community. But critics warn that such laws could be used to file criminal charges or discriminate against people who identify as transgender outside of drag performances. This year, 21 drag-related bills have been considered in 12 states, according to the ACLU’s LGBTQ+ bill tracking database. (Some were carried over from last year’s legislative sessions.)

Most of them failed. Of 15 drag bills considered last year, only three were carried over to this year’s legislative sessions, according to the ACLU’s database. Those that become law often face significant legal challenges.

In Kentucky, for the second year in a row, bills to restrict drag performances have died. It’s possible the House could revive Sen. Lindsey Tichenor’s Senate Bill 147 when lawmakers return April 12 and 15, but the legislature would have no time to override an expected veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Last year, a similar bill sponsored by Tichenor also was passed by the Senate only to die in the House.

In Montana, where a law explicitly restricting drag performances was enacted last year, federal court orders have rendered it unenforceable.

Courts also have deemed the laws in Florida, Tennessee and Texas — all of which use similar language about “adult cabaret entertainment” or “sexually oriented businesses” — unenforceable. A federal court ruled that the Texas law was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment.

Legislation restricting gender-affirming care, transgender girls’ participation in school sports and restroom access is also on the table in many states.

Dr. Lady J says drag-related bills deflect attention from deeper issues facing the LGBTQ+ community.

“[These drag-related bills are] distracting people from the actual anti-trans laws that are being passed,” she said. “It’s flashier to talk about drag than it is to talk about what it means to tell a 12-year-old, 14-year-old trans kid they can have hormones one day and the next day to tell them that thing that you thought was going to save your life … the government decided yesterday you don’t get it anymore. Good luck surviving, kid.”

Largely backed by GOP lawmakers, bills affecting drag performances have often surfaced during election cycles, experts pointed out, deployed to mobilize conservative voter bases.

“[Drag] is the latest in a series of LGBTQ-related issues that [some Republicans] have found compelling as a way of firing up their base and getting folks either to contribute money or to come out and vote for them,” said Melissa Michelson, a political scientist and LGBTQ+ politics expert at Menlo College in California.

The focus on drag-related legislation is likely to wane as election season fades, Michelson added. “It’s all about riling up the public. There’s no actual threat. It’s very much an electoral politics phenomenon.”

Dr. Lady J said these efforts aren’t about protecting children but rather about erasing LGBTQ+ visibility from public spaces. When she performs at kid-friendly events, she is deliberate about selecting music and attire that are both appropriate for and captivating to younger audiences, such as a headdress adorned with pony figurines inspired by the popular toy and show “My Little Pony,” Dr. Lady J told Stateline.

“The reality is that a lot of these people just don’t want queer people anywhere near their kids,” she said. “They don’t want their kids to see that you are allowed to grow up and be happy and be a queer person.”

Many who are backing the bills disagree, saying they’re worried about how adult content is seeping into everyday life.

“We’ve really come to a place where things that were always considered adult-oriented have moved into the public sector and have been marketed and advertised at family-friendly events, when truly they were very sexual in nature,” said Tichenor, of Smithfield, in an interview.

State legislative efforts

Tichenor sponsored a bill — which cleared the Kentucky Senate but never got a House vote — ?targeting performances “with explicitly sexual conduct” in “adult-oriented businesses” near places children might be.

Her bill would restrict these businesses from operating within roughly a city block’s distance — about 933 feet — of other establishments serving children, such as schools, playgrounds or day care facilities. Violators risk losing business or liquor licenses and may face cease-and-desist orders. Local governments also would have the power to impose stricter rules.

“A lot of the opposition really isn’t informed [about] exactly what is in the legislation. And it’s really, very simply, putting adult-oriented businesses in the proper place where minors can’t have access to it,” said Tichenor.

When initially introduced, the bill contained language that redefined as adult-oriented businesses establishments that “host sexually explicit drag performances.” Tichenor said she made several adjustments to the bill after meeting with performers who were concerned with the proposed revised definition. The current version of the legislation no longer references all drag, but describes adult cabaret that contains “explicitly sexual conduct.”

“I thought it was very important that we had that definition specific to drag performances that are of a sexual nature and where those can be and where they cannot be,” she said.

This legislative session, only one related measure has been signed into law, in South Dakota. Approved in early March, the law prohibits the state Board of Regents and the public universities it oversees from using state funds or property for “obscene live conduct.”

While the law does not explicitly ban drag shows, some opponents believe it’s a veiled attempt to target them because two bills with similar language, with one explicitly banning drag, died earlier this year.

“It’s kind of impeaching on First Amendment rights –– free expression, freedom of speech,” said Everett Moran, a legislative intern with the Transformation Project Advocacy Network, a South Dakota-based trans advocacy group.

The bills come after controversy erupted in 2022 over a drag show held at South Dakota State University in Brookings that was advertised as kid-friendly. There was backlash, and the Board of Regents set a policy that prohibits programs on campus where minors are present from including specific sexual activities, obscene live conduct or any material meeting the definition of “harmful to minors.”

Proponents of the law said it reflects that policy.

“This [bill] complements [the board’s policy] and says, you know what, this is more than just a policy. This is a law. You broke a law,” Republican Rep. Chris Karr, the bill’s lead sponsor, told colleagues ahead of the bill’s vote in the House in early February. Karr could not be reached for comment for this story.

No one from the Board of Regents testified in favor of or against the bill, but when asked about how the new law would be enforced, the board said in a statement that it “does not currently authorize or expend public funds to support obscene live conduct, as defined in codified law 22-24-27, on any South Dakota public university campus.”

South Dakota state Rep. Linda Duba, a Democrat who voted against the measure, said the law will not affect the transgender community. Still, she said, the law is unnecessary and “purely political.”

“It’s an election year, and the [Republican] supermajority decided this would be something they thought we should do even though we have policies in place that make this bill unnecessary,” Duba said in an interview. “We’ve already defined in current statute what obscenity is, and we have a policy in place by the Board of Regents, and the bill doesn’t do anything different.”

A different time

In West Virginia, a bill introduced in January would have amended the state’s indecent exposure law to criminalize engaging in “obscene matter.” The bill’s definition of “obscene matter” includes “any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances, or display to any minor.”

The bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Sen. Mike Azinger, could not be reached for comment, and co-sponsor, Republican Sen. Robert Karnes, declined Stateline’s interview request. Before the state’s legislative session ended, the bill was sent to the Judiciary Committee.

In Missouri, a Senate and House bill would each add performances featuring male or female impersonations to the definition of sexually oriented businesses. Both bills are in committee. Under the bills, performers could potentially face felony charges for performing in public spaces where the?show could be viewed by a child.

And in Nebraska, legislation that would restrict minors — defined by state law as anyone under 19 — from attending drag shows, appeared to die after the legislature’s Judiciary Committee voted against advancing it. The proposed legislation would have imposed misdemeanor charges, carrying a maximum penalty of up to a $1,000 fine and one year in jail, against anyone — including parents — who brings a child to a drag event.

Fifty-eight percent of Americans oppose laws that would impose restrictions on drag shows or performances in their state, while 39% support such legislation, according to a 2023 NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll.

Despite the varied opinions among Americans, these drag-related bills have emerged at a time when drag has become a form of mainstream entertainment and widely popular, said Michelson, the political scientist and LGBTQ+ politics expert. This differs from previous attacks on members of the LGBTQ+ community throughout history, who were targeted during a time when stigma was rampant, Michelson added.

“These bans aren’t going to be particularly successful or popular in the way that folks are maybe hoping they will be. It’s kind of too late,” Michelson said. “If they had gone [after] drag performers a decade ago, 15 years ago, it probably would have hit more successfully.”

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication of the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

Politicians on both sides of the debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. But experts say doing so is problematic, because so much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable. (Photo by Andy Sacks/Getty Images)

Crime is shaping up as a potent election issue, and one of the key points of debate is over bail: Which suspects should be jailed before trial, and which ones should be released on bond — and for how much money?

Some conservatives argue that lenient bail policies put suspects who are likely to commit crimes before their upcoming court hearings, or who might skip bail altogether, back on the street. But some progressives?say research does not support that contention. They?argue that detaining defendants because they can’t afford financial bonds is unfair, and note that such defendants are disproportionately Black, Latino and low income.

Illinois, New Jersey and New Mexico have moved away from the use of money bonds. But other states, such as Georgia, Kentucky and New York, are moving in the opposite direction, implementing stricter rules. Tennessee is considering a constitutional amendment that would give judges more discretion to deny bail amid concerns about rising crime rates. The Kentucky House recently passed HB 5, a sweeping crime bill that restricts charitable bail organizations from posting $5,000 or more in bail. It now moves to the Senate.

Politicians on both sides of the debate often connect bail policy to crime rates. But experts say?doing so is problematic, because so much of the crime data that states and cities use is unreliable.

The reality, experts say, is that most crime data is too unreliable to pinpoint specific policies as the sole cause of increasing or decreasing crime rates. The bail system also is oftentimes misunderstood as a form of punishment rather than the process for releasing individuals before trial under certain conditions.

“There’s nothing out there that shows a correlation or a connection of any sort between increasing the rates of pretrial release and the rates of crime,” said Spurgeon Kennedy, vice president of the Crime and Justice Institute, a nonprofit criminal justice research organization. Kennedy previously served as president of the National Association of Pretrial Services Agencies.

These misconceptions about crime can leave voters vulnerable to misinformation ahead of local and national elections.

“If you ask the typical person on the streets, ‘Do you think crime is up or down over the last year,’ they will tell you, ‘Oh, it’s up. It’s way up.’ But we’ve seen reductions in crime overall and also in violent crime,” Kennedy said. “So the facts don’t follow the argument, and that’s unfortunate because that makes it much more easier to keep this out as a political football.”

Both chambers of Georgia’s legislature passed a bill this month that would add 30 additional felony and misdemeanor crimes to the state’s list of bail-restricted offenses, which means that people accused of those crimes would be required to post cash bail. They include charges of unlawful assembly, racketeering, domestic terrorism and possession of marijuana.

The bill also would prevent any?individuals?or?organizations?from posting cash bail more than three times per year unless they establish themselves as bail bonding companies, severely limiting charitable bail funds. The bill is now headed to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.

Some criminal justice advocates say the bill, if enacted, would clash with changes made by a 2018 law to the state’s legal system for people accused of misdemeanors. That law, which was championed by former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, mandates that judges take into account the financial circumstances of the accused when setting bail.

Proponents of the new bill, which was first introduced last year, argue that the measure is necessary to deter crime, support victims of crimes and hold repeat offenders accountable. State Sen. Randy Robertson, who sponsored the bill, said it focuses on people accused of violent crimes.

“What we’re focusing on is trying to get the nonviolent individuals back out into the workforce and back to their families,” Robertson said in an interview. Robertson, a Republican, argued that the bill would also lead to a “dramatic decrease” in the state’s jail population because it offers a pathway for organizations, such as churches and nonprofits, to set themselves up as bail bonding companies.

Those organizations would have to meet the same legal requirements as bond companies, including undergoing background checks, paying fees, and having an application approved by a local sheriff’s department.

Some opponents, though, argue that it would lead to overcrowding of jails and disproportionately harm low-income and Black and Hispanic communities. The ACLU of Georgia has threatened to sue the state if the bill is signed into law, arguing that it’s unconstitutional.

Robertson said that some of the criticisms raised are “rehash complaints” he has heard for the past 25 or 30 years.

“There has been no evidence, independent research that shows placing low bails, allowing judges to set bails at whatever they choose to, keeps a disproportionate amount of individuals held in our jails,” Robertson said. “I don’t think that [this bill] touches the third rail of constitutionality at all.”

Pretrial data and research

Several research studies, though, suggest that setting money bail isn’t effective in ensuring court appearances or improving public safety.

Pretrial policy experts say that?being in jail for even a few days or weeks can cost people their homes or jobs or damage their personal relationships, said Matt Alsdorf, an associate director with the Center for Effective Public Policy and the co-director of the group’s Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research project.

“The use of unnecessary detention has negative impacts, even if you’re just looking at it through a public safety or crime prevention lens,” he said.

Pretrial recidivism has long been studied by criminal justice experts: A 2013 study of more than 150,000 people who were jailed in Kentucky found that longer detention periods increased the likelihood that people would be rearrested both during the pretrial period and within the first two years following the closure of their case. The study also found that people who were held for two or three days had a 9% greater likelihood of failing to appear in court than people who were held for one day.

Furthermore, a study published in the Criminology & Public Policy journal last year found that Black defendants were 34% more likely than white defendants to be recommended to be held behind bars until their cases were resolved.

“The money bond system is a very regressive system that effectively ends up acting as a means of incarcerating populations that are typically already disadvantaged,” Alsdorf said.

In places that have relaxed their bail practices, audits show that pretrial jail populations usually drop following the changes. In some jurisdictions, there also are fewer arrests for certain types of offenses.

In Houston, a lawsuit claiming misdemeanor bail practices in Harris County were unconstitutional led to a settlement and consent decree in 2019. The county is required to release most people charged with misdemeanors on a personal bond, meaning defendants simply promise to attend their next court date.

In the latest independent monitoring report on the system, from 2023, observers wrote that the changes “have saved Harris County and residents many millions of dollars, improved the lives of tens of thousands of persons,” and resulted in “no increase in new offenses by persons arrested for misdemeanors.”

Brandon Garrett, the lead monitor and a Duke University School of Law professor, said in an interview that racial disparities “vanished overnight” after bail practices were relaxed. The monitors have also found an overall decline of about 8% in misdemeanor arrests between 2019 and 2022.

“There were real concerns about the racial disparities of the old cash bail system, and it was pretty remarkable just how quickly those disparities — in terms of who ended up in jail and who didn’t — vanished,” Garrett said.

‘Intentional and deliberate’

In 2017, New Jersey moved away from the use of cash bail in favor of the Public Safety Assessment, an algorithm tool that uses nine factors from an individual’s criminal history to predict their likelihood of returning to court for future hearings and remaining crime-free while on pretrial release.

The changes encouraged more “intentional and deliberate” detention hearings, recalled now-retired trial court Judge Martin Cronin, who sat on the committee that unanimously recommended the switch to a more risk-based bail system.

Cronin, now a consultant with Pretrial Justice Solutions, LLC, said the state’s new system offers more accountability and transparency.

“You’re focused on what are the permissible reasons for detention and how does the record tie into that, individualized to that defendant who’s in front of you,” Cronin told Stateline. “There is real accountability there. … It’s a fundamentally different process.”

Between 2015 and 2023, New Jersey’s pretrial jail population decreased by 27.2%, according to the state judiciary’s Criminal Justice Reform Statistics report last year.

Stateline is a sister newsroom to the Kentucky Lantern in the States Newsroom network and as a nonprofit is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected].?

A recovered 2012 Hyundai Elantra is seen in Berkeley, Calif., after being stolen in early October 2023. Thieves have targeted Hyundai and Kia vehicles that were built without engine immobilizers, a common anti-theft technology that has long been standard on other vehicle models. Now, Hyundai said it will set up “mobile clinics” at five U.S. locations to provide anti-theft software upgrades for vehicles now regularly targeted by thieves using a technique popularized on TikTok and other social platforms. (AP Photo/David Hamilton)

Carjackings and car thefts are up significantly compared with the number of incidents before the pandemic, prompting fear and calls for action in many American cities.

Motor vehicle thefts increased by 29% in 2023 compared with the previous year, while carjackings slightly decreased by 5%?in?nearly 40 American cities,?according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s most recent crime trends report. But between 2019 and 2023, both car thefts and carjackings increased dramatically, by 105% and 93%, respectively, according to the report.

Sweeping GOP bill increasing criminal penalties, outlawing ‘street camping’ clears Kentucky House

As with many other crimes, there is limited FBI data on carjackings and motor vehicle thefts because law enforcement agencies differ in how they collect and submit their data. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics also has not released any updated statistics on carjackings since October 2022, which tracked crimes committed through 2021. That poses a significant challenge for policymakers trying to allocate police resources to the communities that need them most.

?The five cities with the highest year-over-year increases in motor vehicle theft between 2022 and 2023 were Rochester, New York; Baltimore; Buffalo, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Cincinnati. The cities with the highest carjacking rates per 100,000 residents in 2023 were the District of Columbia; Baltimore; Memphis, Tennessee; Chicago; and Denver.

“We certainly don’t want people flying blind making decisions with respect to public safety,” said Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and the former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Anecdotal evidence on social media can heavily shape public perceptions of safety and crime, Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice, wrote in an email to Stateline.

Josh Rovner, the director of youth justice at The Sentencing Project, agreed that “the scraps of information that we have about youth involvement is very easy to overstate and misunderstand.”

Carjacking data, especially at the national level, is hard to come by. And despite the greater availability of motor vehicle theft data, its reliability varies across different law enforcement levels, with some local departments failing to submit their data to federal agencies and others not collecting the information at all.

“We need more local law enforcement agencies to produce that data — not just internally for their own community to report out to the community, but also for policy action,” Piquero said.

What the data says

Since reaching its peak in the 1990s, overall crime in the United States has declined. In 2022, the most recent year with available data, there were 23.5 violent crimes for every 1,000 Americans aged 12 and older, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey.

The violent victimization rate increased by 42% in 2022 compared with 2021, but the past three decades have seen an overall decline.

Carjackings and motor vehicle thefts, however, are up compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It’s hard to say exactly what’s behind the surge, but some crime experts suggest that the economic turmoil during the pandemic, coupled with the relative ease of stealing cars or parts for financial gain, increased the attractiveness of car-related crime.

Carjackings are less common than auto thefts but more violent. In a carjacking the perpetrator directly confronts the vehicle’s owner, while auto theft typically occurs when a car is unoccupied. Motor vehicle theft includes stealing entire cars or specific parts such as tires, rims or catalytic converters. The difference between the two offenses is whether force is used to steal a car.

In the District of Columbia, the city’s police department recorded 958 carjackings last year but only made 173 arrests, according to the Metropolitan Police Department’s carjacking dashboard. Sixty-two percent of those suspects were under the age of 18.

Juveniles might be overrepresented in D.C.’s arrest numbers because they are easier to apprehend, or because they tend to commit crimes together, said Rovner, of The Sentencing Project.

Nationwide, the number of?adults and juveniles?arrested for motor vehicle theft?has consistently declined since the 1980s, according to data from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the juvenile arrest rate was about four times higher than adults,?an analysis of federal data by the Council on Criminal Justice found. By 2020, the rates for both adults and juveniles were about the same.

Misconceptions such as an overemphasis on the role juveniles play in carjackings and auto thefts can lead to misguided policies that may not enhance public safety and, in some cases, may exacerbate the situation, according to Josh Weber, deputy director in the corrections and reentry division of the Council of State Governments Justice Center, a think tank focused on breaking the cycle of incarceration.

“[These misconceptions] tend to lead to more reactionary and punitive policies rather than policies that are necessarily grounded in research and data,” said Weber, who also directs the center’s juvenile justice program.

“Research has consistently shown that detaining more kids, incarcerating more kids, pushing more kids into the juvenile justice system is a bad public safety strategy,” Weber added. “It actually increases the likelihood that kids will reoffend.”

Addressing the surge in vehicular crime

The “super predator” mindset of the 1990s, fueled by fears of a generation of remorseless and violent young offenders, significantly shaped criminal justice policies for decades. This crime theory led to harsher penalties, higher juvenile incarceration rates and a focus on punitive measures rather than rehabilitation.

“We are always at risk when people are afraid of crime and instinctually just up penalties. We’ve been here before,” Rovner said. “One of the responses that comes up is the idea that a serious response is about sending kids to adult courts or adult jails or adult prisons, and that is absolutely the worst response when it comes to public safety.”

A door displays a sign for bail bond services in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous, is one of many jurisdictions working to change its bail protocols. The Los Angeles Superior Court implemented a zero cash bail system in October. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

States can’t figure out what to do about cash bail.

The system — in which an arrested suspect pays cash to avoid sitting in jail until their court date and gets the money back when they appear — is deeply entrenched in the nation’s history as a way to ensure defendants return to face justice.

But cash bail is undergoing a reckoning as policymakers debate its disproportionate effects on underserved communities and people with low incomes who sometimes can’t afford bail — as well as just how much the system truly keeps the public safe.

This year some states such as Illinois and jurisdictions such as Los Angeles County in California and Cuyahoga County in Ohio scaled back their bail systems, even eliminating cash bail entirely for low-level offenses in some cases.

Policymakers in other places, meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction.

Republican lawmakers in at least 14 states — including Georgia, Indiana, Missouri and Wisconsin — introduced about 20 bills this year aimed at increasing the number of non-bailable offenses?and either encouraging or requiring judges to consider defendants’ criminal records when setting bail, according to analysis by The Associated Press.

And in New York state, where?changes?to curtail the use of bail took effect in 2020, lawmakers have?made?several rounds of rollbacks amid concerns about rising crime rates.

Some bail policy advocates argue that these changes may contribute to racial and socioeconomic discrimination by relying on one’s ability to post bail and undermine the idea that those accused of a crime are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“There’s no single answer to effective bail reform,” Meghan Guevara, executive partner with the Pretrial Justice Institute, a criminal justice advocacy group, told Stateline.

Measures to increase the use of cash bail or to include certain factors in assessing bail eligibility saw varying levels of success. In Wisconsin, voters approved a state constitutional amendment in April allowing judges to consider factors such as a defendant’s past convictions and the need to protect the public from bodily harm in “violent crime” cases.

Missouri Republican Gov. Mike Parson signed legislation in July that requires judges who are setting bail to first consider factors such as a suspect’s flight risk, potential danger to others, past convictions for violent crimes and previous failures to appear in court.

In Indiana, lawmakers in April passed their first swipe at Senate Joint Resolution 1, which would amend language in the state’s constitution and enable judges to deny bail to those they consider a “substantial risk.” The bill must pass again in 2025 before appearing on the ballot in 2026.

In Georgia, lawmakers considered legislation that sought to impose cash or property bail for dozens of additional crimes, including misdemeanors. It failed due to disagreements between the House and Senate, but Republican state Rep. Houston Gaines, who sponsored the measure in the House, expects the bill to pass in the next legislative session.

Gaines, in an emailed statement, said: “Eliminating cash bail has been a disaster in places it’s been tried — even New York has reversed course on some of its radical policies. We can’t afford to create a revolving door of criminals who don’t show up for court and victimize other individuals.”

Political backlash and rollbacks

Between 2017 and 2019, a bipartisan movement for changes to bail systems gained momentum at both the local and state levels. Some states, such as New Mexico, New Jersey and Kentucky, sharply curtailed their cash bail systems by almost entirely eliminating cash bail, expanding release programs and moving toward risk-based assessments to determine pretrial release.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic strained crowded jails and detention centers, and agencies eased bail systems to reduce exposure.

Between 2019 and 2020, homicide rates increased 30% — one of the largest year-over-year increases on record, according to data released by the FBI and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Homicide gun deaths also surged 35% in 2020, the largest year-over-year increase recorded in more than 25 years. Despite these increases, the overall violent crime rate in the country did not increase during the pandemic, according to federal crime surveys.

In California and New York, policymakers rolled back their pre-pandemic changes to cash bail.

“Fears about public safety are in many ways greatly overblown and misplaced,” said Sharlyn Grace, a senior policy adviser at the law office of the Cook County Public Defender in Illinois. “It is exceedingly rare for someone who’s released pretrial to be arrested and accused of a new offense that involves violence against another person.”

A report released by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in 2021 found that about 95% of individuals arrested and released between January and September 2020 were not rearrested while awaiting trial, and there was a very little difference in rearrest rates before and after bail reform in the state.

New York had passed a sweeping overhaul in 2019, largely ending the use of money bail for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies, with a focus on imposing the “least restrictive” release conditions. The state’s bail law has undergone multiple rounds of revisions since then, primarily driven by calls from Republicans to amend or completely reverse the law.

In early 2020, New York expanded bail options, particularly in cases involving harm to a person or property. In 2022, the state further broadened the definition of “harm” and clarified factors judges must consider, such as criminal history, when setting release conditions.

This year, negotiations over additional changes led to the removal of the requirement for the “least restrictive” release, a proposal announced by Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul last spring.

Some state Democrats and criminal justice advocacy groups have strongly criticized these changes, arguing that the most recent revisions represent a rollback in progress.

“These rollbacks have had a serious effect on our pretrial population, and we’re still seeing the same kinds of wealth-based and racial inequities that were the drivers of bail reform in the first instance,” said Jullian Harris-Calvin, the director of the Greater Justice New York program under the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit criminal justice advocacy group.

Money bail remains prohibited for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies in New York, with some exceptions related to rearrested individuals.

In 2018, then-California Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed Senate Bill 10 into law, which would have made the Golden State the first to end the use of cash bail for all detained suspects awaiting trials. The American Bail Coalition, a nonprofit trade association representing the bail industry, pushed back hard, organizing Californians Against the Reckless Bail Scheme to lead a repeal effort through a veto referendum.

Voters repealed the measure in 2020. Some who opposed the law said the proposed risk assessment tool — which generally measures factors such as flight risk, public safety risk and criminal history — could potentially cause more harm than good, said Allie Preston, a senior policy analyst for criminal justice reform with the left-leaning policy institute Center for American Progress. Some bail policy advocates say using risk assessment tools in the pretrial process may contribute to more racial and socioeconomic inequities.

Jeff Clayton, the executive director of the American Bail Coalition, said in an interview that risk-based assessments are problematic because “there’s no scientific way to predict pretrial risk in terms of a particular defendant.” Clayton added that setting a bail amount offers more flexibility, which may be beneficial in some cases.

“The question is, can we engineer the alternate system better than the existing system of monetary bonds, posting bonds and staying in jail that’s existed throughout history?” Clayton said. “There’s reasons to suggest that we can’t do a better job.”

Although statewide change to California’s bail system failed, a few jurisdictions in the state have introduced other changes to their bail systems. Santa Clara County and the city of San Francisco both use risk assessment tools and offer other services to help those released pretrial return for their court dates and address needs, such as transportation.

The Los Angeles County Superior Court implemented a zero cash bail system in October. Under the new bail protocols, those charged with nonviolent or less serious crimes will be detained before arraignment only if a judge determines they present a threat to the community or a potential flight risk instead of whether they are capable of posting bail. In cases of violent and serious felonies, however, the bail system remains intact.

“[Los Angeles County’s new] bail policy is a really important step towards promoting safety and justice and away from a system where the rich are able to buy their freedom and the poor languish in jail,” said Claire Simonich, the associate director of Vera California, an initiative under the Vera Institute of Justice.

Some residents, county officials and members of law enforcement say the new policy will compromise law enforcement’s ability to address crime. And at least a dozen municipalities in Los Angeles County filed a lawsuit in September to block the new system from taking effect.

More legislative efforts

Lawmakers in some states have pushed for further changes in their legislative sessions.

Connecticut state Rep. Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat, said the?problem?in his state stems from an outdated constitutional provision that limits the state’s ability to deny bail, primarily reserving bail for capital offenses. But the state abolished the death penalty more than a decade ago. Since capital offenses no longer exist in Connecticut, there are limited legal grounds for holding people pretrial, especially if they have the financial means to post bail.

“We really need to first repeal that provision out of the state constitution and then move much more towards a risk-based system that takes into account someone’s risk and likelihood to flee as opposed to simply their ability to pay,” Stafstrom said in an interview with Stateline.

In Minnesota, a bill introduced by Democrats this year would limit the use of cash bail by the courts for misdemeanor offenses.

In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where Cleveland is located, informal changes to the court’s culture and practices have reduced the number of people required to pay cash bail, according to The Marshall Project, a news outlet focused on criminal justice. The state supreme court also made changes in 2020 and 2021 aimed at reducing the number of people jailed before trial. Last year, voters passed a measure that requires judges to consider certain factors when setting bail, including public safety.

The adoption of alternative approaches, such as pretrial risk assessments, is gaining ground across the country. Some two dozen different risk assessment tools are in use in at least 26 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

This story is republished from Stateline,?a sister publication of Kentucky Lantern and part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.?

Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, speaks at a campaign event earlier this month in Tampa, Fla. DeSantis touts Florida’s low crime rate, but fewer than 1 in 10 law enforcement agencies in his state reported their crime statistics to the FBI in 2021. (John Raoux/The Associated Press)

When Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his presidential campaign in May, he proudly told the nation that Florida’s crime rate in 2021 had reached a 50-year low.

But really, DeSantis couldn’t say for sure.

That’s because fewer than 1 in 10 law enforcement agencies in his state had reported their crime statistics to the FBI. In fact, more than 40% of the Sunshine State’s population was unaccounted for in the data used by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in its 2021 statewide crime report.

In Wichita, Kansas, Democratic Mayor Brandon Whipple claimed in May that violent crime had decreased by half during his term. But Whipple’s source, the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, missed half the violent crimes recorded by the Wichita Police Department, possibly because the agency couldn’t mesh its system with the FBI’s recently revamped system.

Across the country, law enforcement agencies’ inability — or refusal — to send their annual crime data to the FBI has resulted in a distorted picture of the United States’ crime trends, according to a new Stateline analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data.

“We have policymakers making policy based on completely incomplete data. We have political elections being determined based on vibes rather than actual data. It’s a mess,” said Jeff Asher, a data analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics, a data consulting firm.

Experts warn that some policymakers, knowingly or unknowingly, use those flawed statistics to tout promising crime trends — misleading voters. The inaccurate data also can affect efforts to improve public safety and criminal justice, potentially leading policymakers to miss the mark in addressing real community issues.

“The problem for voters is that they don’t have very good information about what levels of safety actually are,” said Anna Harvey, a politics, data science and law professor at New York University. Harvey also is the director of the university’s Public Safety Lab and the president of the Social Science Research Council.

“They’re a little bit vulnerable to politicians who are kind of throwing around allegations and claims about crime that may or may not be accurate,” she told Stateline.

DeSantis faced criticism for repeating the incomplete numbers, and NBC News this summer reported that law enforcement rank-and-file had warned that the statistics weren’t correct.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement defended the numbers to NBC News, saying, in part, that “criticism about FDLE’s robust data collection methods is unfounded.”

FBI’s switch to a new system

A year ago, when the FBI initially released its 2021 national crime data, there wasn’t enough information to tell whether crime went up, went down or stayed the same. The FBI had estimated results for areas that declined to submit data or were unable to do so.

That’s partly because the FBI had rolled out a new reporting system. The data collection system, called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, gathered more detail on individual incidents but also required training and tech upgrades by state and local policing agencies.

For the first time in two decades, the national law enforcement reporting rate fell below 70% in 2021, primarily due to the FBI’s transition. In 2022, many law enforcement agencies across the country were not NIBRS-certified in time to submit their 2021 crime data, which contributed to lower reporting rates.

Even before the new system launched, there was a gap in reporting nationwide. Prior to 2021, 23% of U.S. law enforcement agencies on average did not report any crime data to the FBI. In 2020, 24% of agencies did not report, and in 2021, it surged to 40%.

Inconsistent reporting not only hampers the ability to draw comparisons over time and across state lines, but also injects uncertainty into discussions about crime, said Ames Grawert, senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.

“Issues like that are invariably going to lead to some people having a misunderstanding of crime data — makes it harder to talk about crime in some states, especially given the low participation rate in Florida, for example,” Grawert said in an interview with Stateline.

The FBI’s latest crime report, released earlier this month, offers a glimmer of progress toward transparency: Seventy-one percent of law enforcement agencies nationwide submitted data through NIBRS or the FBI’s previous reporting system, up 11 percentage points from last year. About 60% of participating law enforcement agencies submitted their data exclusively through NIBRS this year. The FBI accepted data through both NIBRS and the older system this year, a change from last year’s NIBRS-only approach.

According to the incomplete numbers, violent crime in the U.S. dropped last year, returning to pre-pandemic levels, while property crimes saw a significant increase.

While crime data reporting to the FBI is optional, some states, such as Illinois and Minnesota, have laws requiring their local law enforcement agencies to report crime data to their state law enforcement agencies. State law enforcement agencies often serve as clearinghouses for local crime data, and in some states, they are responsible for sharing this data with the feds. Some local agencies also may send their data directly to the FBI.

But some states lag.

Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and West Virginia, for example, all remain below the 50% reporting mark, which means less than half of the police departments in their states submitted 2022 crime data to the FBI. Despite these reporting rates, the data shows that greater shares of these state’s populations were represented in last year’s data than in 2021.

Florida has had the lowest reporting rate two years in a row — 6% in 2021 and 44% in 2022 — partly because of the state’s ongoing transition to NIBRS. For 2021, the FBI did not accept Florida’s data through the previous data collection system, which would have represented about 58% of the state’s population, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Public Information Office.

“It’s a problem in both red and blue states, it’s also a local issue,” Kylie Murdock, a policy adviser with Third Way, a left-leaning national think tank, said in an interview with Stateline.

“When people use this data to back up tough-on-crime approaches, and say, ‘Our approach in this state is working’ —?when in reality, that’s not necessarily the truth because you don’t know the full scope of the problem,” said Murdock.

Roughly a quarter of the U.S. population was not represented in the 2022 federal crime data, according to a Stateline analysis. More than 6,000 of 22,116 law enforcement agencies did not submit data.

Major police departments, including those in big cities such as Los Angeles and New York, did not submit any data in 2021. NYPD said it couldn’t submit summary statistics in 2021 as it had previously because of the FBI’s change in requirements, but was NIBRS-certified this year. Both cities’ departments did submit summary data to the FBI in 2022 through the old reporting system.

The FBI’s 2021 agency participation data shows that the 10 states with the lowest reporting rates included a balanced mix of both blue and red states, while last year’s data shows more red states among the 10 states with the lowest reporting rates.

Political and social consequences

The gaps in the FBI’s crime data create significant challenges for researchers and policymakers attempting to make sense of crime trends. As elections draw near and crime has reclaimed the spotlight, these challenges become increasingly pressing.

During last year’s congressional elections, 61% of registered voters said violent crime would be very important when making their decision about whom to vote for, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center.

While the overall violent crime rate has steadily declined on average over the past 20 years, the Pew Research Center suggested that voters might be reacting to specific types of violent crime, such as homicide, which saw a 30% increase between 2019 and 2020 — one of the largest year-over-year increases on record.

“Voters tend to not have that kind of access. Politicians then try to play on voters’ concerns about crime, but without giving voters the information that will actually be useful for them,” Harvey said.

Experts expect that the challenge of incomplete national crime data — and the incomplete picture it presents — will persist for years because many law enforcement agencies still are working to adopt the new reporting system.

That could affect how policymakers allocate money for law enforcement, crime prevention programs and other public safety initiatives. With crime data, it’s important to know what types of crimes are included and to avoid narrow timeframes when describing trends, said Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist for the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research think tank.

“Oftentimes relying on the FBI data, which tends to be outdated, really allows politicians to sensationalize a few news stories. Without having more up-to-date data, it may not be accurate,” Lopez told Stateline.

“Politician or otherwise, when we talk about crime, it’s really important to have a larger context.”

Federal assistance

Law enforcement agencies nationwide have received over $180 million in federal funding to help with the transition since the FBI’s switch to its new NIBRS reporting system was announced in 2015. Many law enforcement agencies are still working to fully transition to the new system.

For example, in Louisiana, the agencies serving some of the state’s most populous cities, including Lafayette, New Orleans and Shreveport, did not report any data to the FBI last year because they were implementing new records management systems, according to Jim Craft, the executive director of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement.

Louisiana’s low reporting rate may be due to smaller law enforcement agencies reporting crime statistics through their local sheriff’s office, which makes it look like fewer agencies are reporting, Craft wrote in an email.

In Hawaii, the police departments serving Maui and Hawaii counties were not certified in time to submit data through NIBRS to the FBI last year, according to Paul Perrone, the director of the Hawaii Uniform Crime Reporting program. Last month, Hawaii became one of the few states where all law enforcement agencies are NIBRS-certified, Perrone wrote in an email.

Meanwhile, even as more law enforcement agencies submit data in coming years, experts warn that the FBI’s database accounts only for crimes reported to the police. And according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, over 50% of violent crimes and about 70% of property crimes are never reported.

This story is republished from Stateline, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.

Former New Mexico State NCAA college basketball player Deuce Benjamin breaks down in tears while speaking at a news conference in Las Cruces, N.M., in May. Benjamin and Shak Odunewu discussed the lawsuit they filed alleging teammates ganged up and sexually assaulted them multiple times, while their coaches and others at the school didn’t act when confronted with the allegations. Some states have bolstered anti-hazing laws, but definitions and punishments aren’t uniform. (Andres Leighton/The Associated Press)

Max Gruver spent the early morning hours of Sept. 14, 2017, heavily intoxicated and passed out on a couch inside the Phi Delta Theta chapter house at Louisiana State University.

He had been forced to repeatedly chug 190-proof Diesel liquor in a hazing ritual called “Bible Study,” during which pledges are quizzed on fraternity facts. The incident caused Gruver, a freshman majoring in political communications, to inhale his own vomit into his lungs.

By the time fraternity members finally sought medical aid the next morning, Gruver’s pulse was weak and they couldn’t tell if he was breathing. Gruver’s blood alcohol level was .495, more than six times Louisiana’s legal driving limit, when he died from what an autopsy concluded was “acute alcohol intoxication with aspiration.” He was 18.

As college students begin a new semester this fall, many will participate in rituals to bring in new members of a Greek fraternity or sorority, a sports team or other club. Sometimes, the initiations involve heavy alcohol use or physical assaults. Although awareness of hazing and its dangers has grown significantly, it still happens.

In June, New Mexico State University agreed to pay $8 million to settle a lawsuit over hazing allegations in the men’s basketball program. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she will be introducing anti-hazing and abuse legislation?next year. In July, Northwestern University fired its head football coach after an investigation found widespread hazing on the team. And Boston College suspended its swim and dive team this month following hazing allegations.

At least 44 states and the District of Columbia have anti-hazing laws in place, most recently Ohio in 2021 and Pennsylvania in 2018. Kentucky and Washington?strengthened their laws this past legislative session. Six states — Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and Wyoming — have none, according to StopHazing, an anti-hazing advocacy and research organization.

But?state?anti-hazing laws,?most of which were approved in the past 15 years,?differ in their definitions and the criminal penalties they impose. Depending on the state, participating in hazing activities may result in a fine, misdemeanor charge or a felony charge if the hazing results in serious bodily harm or death.

Some experts and anti-hazing advocates say the penalties in some states aren’t harsh enough to deter organizations from participating in hazing. And even in states that have laws, incidents like the one that left Max Gruver dead don’t necessarily lead to serious criminal charges.

Four former LSU students and ex-members of Phi Delta Theta were indicted in connection with Gruver’s death. Three of them faced misdemeanor hazing charges, while the fourth faced a felony charge of negligent homicide. The university also banned Phi Delta Theta from its campus until at least 2033.

Gruver’s parents — Rae Ann and Stephen Gruver — pressed for stiffer penalties for hazing, prompting Louisiana to enact the?Max Gruver Act?in 2018, which?made hazing that results in serious bodily harm or death a felony;?introduced a statewide definition of?hazing;?and mandated that hazing incidents and disciplinary actions taken against members of student groups be reported to the respective host institutions.

“It’s unfortunate that with the death of our son — it took that to get Louisiana to change their laws,” Stephen Gruver told Stateline. “It’s something that can be prevented; this never should have happened to our son.”

Since then, the Gruvers, along with parents of other hazing victims, have advocated for?stricter state and federal penalties for hazing and?greater transparency?when such incidents occur.

“If you don’t have a strong enough law, it’s not a deterrent for these kids and they’re just going to keep on being bad actors because they just don’t care,” Stephen Gruver said.

Hazing’s wide reach

Hazing, a practice rooted in tradition and camaraderie, has long been a controversial and pervasive issue on college campuses. While hazing incidents have garnered significant national attention over the past decade, the earliest account of hazing is believed to date back to the fourth century — when Plato observed young boys playing “practical jokes” on other students in school, according to a book written by journalist and anti-hazing advocate Hank Nuwer. The first anti-hazing law in the United States was enacted in New York in 1894.

In the U.S., more than 280 people allegedly have died due to hazing since 1838, according to the U.S. Hazing Deaths Database. The database is maintained by Nuwer. Hazing deaths are not currently tracked by any U.S. government entity.

In 2017, the year of Gruver’s death, at least six other young adults also died a result of alleged hazing activities. Between 2018 and 2021, at least 23 people allegedly died due to hazing activities. No hazing deaths were reported in 2022.

According to a 2008 study by two University of Maine professors, more than half of college students involved with student organizations experience hazing, which often involves “alcohol consumption, humiliation, isolation, sleep-deprivation, and sex acts.” The study, which is considered the most comprehensive analysis of hazing in the United States, also found that about 47% of students come to college having already experienced hazing.

“Hazing is prevalent throughout society. It’s not just a college thing. It’s really seen anywhere that there’s a differing power dynamic,” Todd Shelton, the executive director of the Hazing Prevention Network, told Stateline. Hazing appears in settings such as high schools, other student groups, the military and professional workplaces.

In many states, hazing carries misdemeanor charges — a fact that some advocates argue does little to effectively deter hazing incidents.

“Where hazing is a minor misdemeanor, it’s not taken seriously by law enforcement because it’s not worth the effort to prosecute,” Shelton said. “One of the biggest hurdles is getting the penalty or statute to match the seriousness of the crime.”

‘Imagine getting that call,’ implored Kentucky mom

In Kentucky, Lofton’s Law was signed into law in March, increasing the penalty for hazing that leads to death or serious physical injury to a Class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Reckless participation in hazing can result in a misdemeanor.

The Kentucky law is named for Thomas “Lofton” Hazelwood of Henderson who died when he was 18 of alcohol poisoning while pledging the Farmhouse fraternity at the University of Kentucky.

His family and friends crusaded for the new law, which was sponsored by Sen. Robbie Mills, a Republican from Hazelwood’s hometown of Henderson. Mills, now the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, argued that hazing warranted its own law to emphasize the dangers and to send the message that “this is a serious issue and not something just to joke about.”

A UK investigation determined that Lofton had drunk about 18 one-ounce shots of bourbon within 45 minutes. Although no signs of physical coercion were found in connection to his death, UK detailed multiple occurrences of other hazing activities within the fraternity. Interviews revealed that new members were subject to line-ups and berating and expected to provide personal servitude and participate in illegal activities.

Tracey Hazelwood, Lofton’s mother, told the Lantern in February, “I had no clue what was going on. He was joining the Farmhouse, and we were told that it’s just a bunch of good old boys.”

She personally implored lawmakers to create penalties for hazing, telling a committee: “We beg of you to pass this law because we don’t want anyone else to go through what we went through. Think about being three hours away and you get that phone call.”

Washington makes hazing a gross misdemeanor

And in Washington state, the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing Law, which was passed unanimously and signed into law in May, makes hazing a gross misdemeanor instead of a misdemeanor; if the hazing results in substantial bodily harm, it rises to a felony. The law bumps up penalties for hazing from a maximum of 90 days to up to a year — and up to five years for the felony charge.

Washington became the 15th state to elevate hazing to a felony if it causes severe injury or death.

“For the first time we’re talking about hazing in a very real way. There’s been a culture of secrecy, in my view, of hazing for many, many years,” Rep. Mari Leavitt, a Democrat who wrote the bill, said in an interview with Stateline. “Students will recognize that there is a pretty significant consequence for choosing to behave in these barbaric activities and it can change the trajectory of their lives.”

The new law follows the passage of Sam’s Law in 2022, named after the same student, which updated the definition of hazing and required universities and colleges, as well as fraternity and sorority chapters, to make hazing investigation records public.

“The more that people are aware, and willing to talk about it and willing to report what they see, that will start to change that culture of secrecy to something that holds people accountable and also is transparent in terms of what’s happening across states,” Leavitt said.

Anti-hazing movement

In 15 states, a major weakness in the anti-hazing law, according to StopHazing, is the absence of a “consent clause,” which asserts that an individual’s willingness to participate in potentially hazardous actions — as when a student agrees to a certain activity — does not protect those involved from hazing charges. Some anti-hazing laws explicitly spell out that consent is not a defense.

“The consent clause … is really important in terms of documenting hazing and having policy be really effective,” said Elizabeth Allan, the principal of StopHazing and a professor of higher education at the University of Maine. Allan co-wrote the 2008 national study on hazing.

Advocacy groups also have been?pushing for national anti-hazing legislation to establish uniform?definitions and penalties.

Proposed federal legislation, originally known as the Report and Educate About Campus Hazing Act, or REACH Act, was initially introduced in Congress in 2021. This year, it is set to be reintroduced under a new name, the Stop Campus Hazing Act. The legislation encompasses a range of transparency and prevention measures, including mandatory public reporting of hazing incidents and the implementation of comprehensive prevention programs.

“Hazing is often underreported, underrecognized and it’s really not being taken as seriously as it should be given the harmful impact that it has on individuals and communities,” said Jessica Mertz, the executive director of the Clery Center, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting campus safety.

Among Greek fraternities and sororities, discussions around cracking down on hazing have gained momentum. Still, critics argue that most state anti-hazing laws should impose tougher penalties on national Greek life organizations and institutions, rather than individuals.

“As a founding member of the Anti-Hazing Coalition, the North American Interfraternity Conference and our member fraternities advocate for stronger federal and state hazing laws to increase criminal penalties and provide greater transparency to hold individuals accountable when found to be involved in hazing,” Judson Horras, CEO of the North American Interfraternity Conference, said in a statement.

“While in this partnership, we have seen stronger state laws passed in over a dozen states and are encouraged by the introduction of the bipartisan Stop Campus Hazing Act in the 118th Congress last week,” the statement said.

A 2020 paper by a Penn State University professor and published in the Journal of College and University Law underscores this argument. Law professor Justin J. Swofford argues that for legislation to be most effective in deterring future hazing injuries and deaths, there must be greater criminal and civil penalties imposed on both schools and fraternities.

However, some voices within the Greek life community question whether genuine change is achievable. Lucy Taylor, who disaffiliated from Alpha Phi at the University of Maryland and hosts “SNAPPED,” a podcast exploring Greek life, suggests that change within Greek organizations can often appear performative.

These initiatives may encompass disciplinary committees, mandatory anti-hazing programs or even the hiring of security teams, Taylor said.

“They make it seem like change is happening, but those things that they’re doing to create change don’t actually have any power. If they wanted hazing to be gone, it would have been gone years ago,” Taylor said. “They don’t do anything or they don’t do what they’re intended to do, and the hazing culture just becomes even more secret.

“The more secret it becomes, the worse it gets.”

A forensic analyst removes a pair of underwear from an evidence bag for testing in a sexual assault case in the biology lab at the Houston Forensic Science Center in Houston. Texas is among at least 40 states and the District of Columbia that have implemented or committed to establishing a rape kit tracking system, according to the End the Backlog website run by the nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation. Pat Sullivan/The Associated Press

It can take hours for a sexual assault victim to undergo the multiple swabs, hair samples, blood and urine collections, and other invasive procedures of a sexual assault examination. And then it can take months, sometimes years, for investigators to process that evidence kit.

But now, responding to demands from survivors and their advocates, more states have committed to tackling yearslong investigative backlogs — and dozens are adopting tracking systems that allow patients to follow the forensic paths of their own sexual assault kits.

The tracking systems aim to address historical challenges, such as inadequate forensic evidence handling, delays in case processing and underreporting of assaults. The systems can streamline communication among law enforcement agencies, forensic laboratories and survivors, for example. Perhaps most importantly, the accountability and transparency that come with tracking the assault kits also can speed up a case’s resolution.

“The overarching purpose is to restore dignity and sort of try to tip the balance of power from folks who have been sexually assaulted,” said Colorado state Rep. Meg Froelich, a Democrat who authored her state’s rape kit tracking law, in an interview with Stateline.

“What we’re trying to do is get folks to come forward,” she said, “and to feel that the process is there for them to achieve what they need for healing and closure.”

At least 40 states and the District of Columbia have implemented or committed to establishing a sexual assault kit tracking system in the past nine years, including several coming on board this year, according to the End the Backlog website run by the nonprofit advocacy group Joyful Heart Foundation. The foundation supports survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse.

Alaska and Florida launched their online sexual assault kit tracking portals this summer. Colorado and Louisiana enacted legislation in May and June, respectively, to establish their own tracking systems.

Advocates say providing a tool to monitor the progress of their kits gives survivors a sense of control and participation in the investigative process, which can be crucial in their healing journey. Moreover, the transparency offered by tracking systems ensures that law enforcement agencies are held accountable for timely kit processing.

“This is just one more tool to evaluate the whole entire system, whether it’s the [sexual assault nurse examiners], the crime lab, the police departments, so that we are doing the best service to these survivors,” said Monica Taylor, the special projects coordinator for the Louisiana attorney general’s office, in an interview with Stateline.

“This tracking system is going to help them go from being a victim to being a survivor, and taking some of the control and power back into their lives,” she said.

Tracking systems also allow advocates to fully support survivors who may have concerns about delays, said Nicole Kass Colvin, the manager of coordinated community responses for the Ohio Alliance to End Sexual Violence. Prior to the launch of Ohio’s tracking system in 2020, monitoring a kit’s progress was challenging, often requiring survivors to contact law enforcement for updates, Colvin recalled.

“If there was a mistake made somewhere within the process, we [now] can see where that error is and rectify it, rather than that kit being lost for years with no idea of knowing what happened or where it might be,” she said.

Sexual assault kit tracking systems are typically web portals designed to trace the kits’ movement throughout their chain of custody.

With the collection of a rape evidence kit at a medical facility, a unique tracking or serial number is assigned and provided to the survivor. Law enforcement typically picks up the kits, then sends them to a crime lab for testing.

After testing, the kit may be stored at the crime lab or another secure location for several months or years, depending on the state’s storage requirements.

The evidence can be used to link the assault to a suspect in existing DNA databases, or to develop a DNA profile that can be used in the future. Processing times for rape kits vary by state; for instance, it can take up to 120 days in Florida, 60 days in Alaska and just 30 days in Ohio.

Addressing backlog, empowering survivors

The exact scope of the rape kit testing backlog remains unclear. But as of Sept. 7, there are at least 59,894 untested kits in 23 states, according to?data collected by the Joyful Heart Foundation.

Among the contributing factors to the backlog are victim-blaming attitudes, budget cuts, reduced crime lab staff, and bias against women and victims of sex crimes, according to a white paper published in 2017 by the U.S. Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women.

In recent years, the issue has eroded public trust in law enforcement, the agency noted. In some instances, untested rape kits were linked to cases dating back to the 1980s.

Sexual assault survivors, from Houston in 2020 to Memphis in 2023, have filed class-action lawsuits against city officials over processing delays.

A statewide sexual assault kit tracker has quickened the pace of forensic testing in some states, and in some cases allowed states to identify and address delays. Several states have reduced their backlogs of unsubmitted rape kits, those that were never even sent to a lab for testing.

Alaska, for example, cleared its backlog of untested kits that were held by law enforcement in 2021 and completed result analyses in 2022, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety’s communication director, Austin McDaniel.

In 2022, 75 untested sexual assault kits were found at the state’s crime lab — down from 558 in 2021, according to statistics published by the state’s public safety department.

Similarly, New Hampshire reduced its backlog from 582 kits in 2019 to just one kit in 2022, according to an analysis by USAFacts, a nonpartisan data center.

The kits have significant investigative value. In Ohio, for example, state investigators plowing through a backlog of 13,931 kits found 5,349 hits in a DNA database. The state has now cleared its backlog entirely.

North Carolina and Michigan also have reduced their backlog significantly. From 2018 to 2022, North Carolina saw a 99% reduction in unsubmitted kits, while Michigan achieved a 95% reduction during the same period. USAFacts also found that in some states, such as Louisiana and Maryland, the number of unsubmitted kits held by law enforcement increased between 2018 and 2022. Both states’ tracking systems are currently in development.

Under Louisiana’s new?law, the state’s sexual assault kit tracking system will be created by the Louisiana State Police.The agency must have a plan by January, and all police and health care providers who store rape kits must fully participate by July 1, 2024.

Rape kit tracking systems play a pivotal role in empowering survivors and enhancing transparency in the criminal justice system, said Morgan Lamandre, the president and CEO of Sexual Trauma Awareness & Response, a Louisiana-based nonprofit advocacy and support group.

“Having this system in place for Louisiana is another step in the right direction for survivors to be taken seriously, for survivors to be treated with real fairness, dignity and respect,” Lamandre said in an interview with Stateline.

Technology and funding

The path to establishing state tracking systems varies widely. Some states have passed laws, while others have set up their trackers through agency action or funding priorities, according to Mateo Cello, a policy implementation associate with the Joyful Heart Foundation. New Hampshire, for example, secured federal money in 2019 to develop a tracking system, but doesn’t have a law on the books.

In some states, tracking systems exist only in specific cities or counties. Before the launch of Michigan’s statewide system, Wayne County partnered with UPS to create a sexual assault kit tracking system in Detroit, using the same technology the company uses to track packages.

Technological approaches also differ, with some states buying software from private companies and others, such as Idaho, building their systems in-house. Multiple vendors and systems, such as SAMS-Track and Track-Kit by Invita Healthcare Technologies, now sell tracking software for evidence kits.

Some states have relied on their own coffers to fund rape kit tracking projects, while others have used grants awarded by the Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women or the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative, which is funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, a federal agency that awards grants for state, local and tribal criminal justice projects.

“One of the main barriers is the initial cost,” Cello said. “A lot of states get scared by how much implementing a tracking system can cost, so these federal grants definitely help ease some of the states’ worries in terms of creating a tracking system.”

The Sexual Assault Kit Initiative has awarded more than $140 million since 2015 to 23 state agencies, three state law enforcement agencies and nine state attorney general offices in 30 states. Much of the money goes to tracking, though some states have used it to tackle backlogs or hire staff.

“There’s definitely been a lot of progress. That doesn’t mean that it’s done. There’s still a lot more work to do,” Cello said.

“We’d like to see all 50 states get a tracking system.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: [email protected]. Follow Stateline on Facebook and Twitter.