The U.S. employs two distinct measures of crime. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting program counts the number of crimes reported to police annually. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, in its National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), asks 240,000 people a year whether they have been victims of a crime. The two measures have diverged since 2020: The FBI has reported less crime, while more people say they have been victims. For example, between 2021 and 2022, the FBI UCR showed reported violent crime fell by 2.1%, but the NCVS showed reported violent crime increased by 29.3%. The figure at the top of this post clearly shows how the two measures rarely move together.