Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: An FBI report shows an overall decline in violent and property crimes in the first six months of 2018 when compared to the same period the year before.

Acting Assistant Director Christine Halvorsen…

Christine Halvorsen: Violent crime declined about 4.3 percent, and property crime also decreased by 7.2 percent compared to the same period in 2017.

Halpern: The violent crime category did see a 0.6 percent increase in rape during this same time period.

About 14,500 of the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies voluntarily submitted the data to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

The FBI encourages all law enforcement agencies to report the data.

Christine Halvorsen: We work on a daily basis to try to get 100 percent participation. And we have various methods that we do that through—through different working groups, through boards, through different relationships we have.

Halpern: The FBI cautions users against analyzing the data and using it for rankings because it could result in misleading conclusions. To see the report, visit fbi.gov. With FBI, This Week, I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.