Florida Governor Ron DeSantis touted the state’s low crime rate as a proud achievement when he announced his presidential run on his Twitter space last month.
“To claim Florida is unsafe is a total farce,” DeSantis said in a statement. “I mean, are you kidding me? If you look at every city in this country, crime abounds. In Florida, the crime rate is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”
but marshall project His statements turned out to be based on spotty and incomplete crime data. About half of the agencies that police more than 40% of the state’s population are missing from the statistics. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) was used for statewide estimates.
Participation in national data collection is even lower. Last year, only 49 Florida police agencies were registered in the FBI’s federal database, less than 8 percent of police departments, according to an analysis by the Marshall Project. This means that Florida’s 500+ police departments, including most of the largest agencies such as the Miami Police Department, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, and the St. Petersburg Police Department, are missing from the national context. Florida has the lowest participation rate of any state in the nation.
Experts say Florida’s low participation rate means it’s difficult to compare Florida’s crime rate with other states or compare Florida’s current crime statistics with data from previous years. He said it meant it was nearly impossible. “To speak accurately about a problem, you have to be able to define it correctly,” said Brendan Lantz, a professor of criminology at Florida State University. “And you can’t do that with the existing data for Florida.
“An FDLE spokesperson said the ministry had to make an estimate because of police intervention. Reporting data through two systems. The agency plans to use estimates over the next few years as Florida transitions from its outdated data system.
“The methods used by FDLE statisticians are statistically reliable and accurately represent Florida’s crime rate trends,” a spokeswoman said in an email. “The methods used by the FDLE are similar to those used by the FBI.” A governor’s spokesperson referred criminal data-related questions to state enforcement agencies and did not respond to other questions.
