Filed 6:00 a.m.
See If Police in Your State Reported Crime Data to the FBI
There are growing gaps in U.S. crime stats. Use our tables to check on your state and local agencies.
By Weihua Li, Andrew Rodriguez Calderón and David Eads
Illustrations by Bo-Won Keum
Download the crime participation data.
Nearly 40% of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the U.S. failed to report crime data to the FBI's national database in 2021 after the transition to a new collection system. The transition creates huge gaps in national crime stats sure to be exploited by politicians in this election year.
Source: Agency participation data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Feb. 7, 2022, which was the deadline for local agencies to submit crime data for the Q4 2021 quarterly report. Local agencies had until March 7, 2022 to submit data for the FBI's 2021 national crime report, so the final participation status may change.
Reporting by state
The missing data is not random — in some of the largest states like California, Florida and New York, most agencies did not report data.
Reporting by agency
Many criminologists fear the missing data means the nation would not get reliable crime data for years to come. If a local police department did not report crime data to the FBI, it would also mean scholars, policy makers and the public cannot compare what's happening with crime in their community with other places.
Source: Agency participation data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Feb. 7, 2022, which was the deadline for local agencies to submit crime data for the Q4 2021 quarterly report. Local agencies had until March 7, 2022 to submit data for the FBI's 2021 national crime report, so the final participation status may change. The FBI's 2021 participation data records the number of months of crime data was submitted by law enforcement agencies, whereas the 2020 data only indicates if the agency reported any data.
Weihua Li Twitter Email is a data reporter at The Marshall Project. She uses data analysis and visualization to tell stories about the criminal justice system. She studied journalism and comparative politics at Boston University and graduated from Columbia University with a master's degree in data journalism.
Andrew Rodriguez Calderón Twitter Email is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project. He previously worked with the Columbia Journalism School's Cross Borders Data Investigations team, looking into illegal political finance and nonprofits across Central and South America. He uses computer programming and data visualization to report on criminal justice and immigration, and has collaborated on national award-winning stories, including Detained, Think Debtor's Prisons Are a Thing of the Past? Not in Mississippi and More Immigrants Are Giving Up Court Fights and Leaving the U.S..
David Eads Twitter Email is The Marshall Project's data editor. He has been covering criminal justice issues since co-founding The Invisible Institute in the early 2000s. He was a member of the team of independent journalists who won the 2019 Premio Gabo for reporting on mass graves in Mexico.
Tags: →data collection →police data →Database →Elections →FBI →Uniform Crime Report →National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) →Violent Crime →crime wave →crime data
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