FBI reveals CA and FL were 2021’s worst crime data reporters — Why it Matters

This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released statistics showing which state’s law enforcement agencies turned over crime data to the FBI in 2021, and revealed the two highly-populated states of Florida and California turned in the least crime data to the federal government.

A little over a month after the FBI released its annual crime report for 2021, the agency revealed that a massive chunk of missing crime data from states that failed to report the bulk of its statistics may have rendered the crime report relatively incorrect.

The Marshall Project, a criminal justice nonprofit news outlet, reported that 2021’s crime data collection was wholly incomplete. 

“The uncertainty largely stems from the fact that 2021’s data was more incomplete than any in recent memory. Comprehensive FBI data depends on law enforcement agencies’ (there are about 18,000 in the U.S.) voluntary submissions,” the Marshall Project wrote in October. “This year about 7,000 police agencies, covering about 35% of the U.S. population, were missing.”

With Florida and California among the top three most populous US states, their crime data could likely make a big difference in the federal government’s annual crime report.

Axios found earlier this year that in Florida, only two out of the state’s 757 law enforcement agencies reported their crime data to the FBI in 2021.

The number in California did not come in much higher, at only two percent of the state’s law enforcement agencies turning over crime data to the feds. Some other states that rounded out the bottom few in crime data reporting include Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York and New Jersey.