Justice

CityLab Daily: The Truth About Crime Stats

Carolyn Kaster/AP

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Outdated crime data: When Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke to law enforcement officials in Toledo earlier this week, he relayed the city’s rape, assault, and murder statistics to illustrate how the decline in crime since the 1990s has “reversed” in the last two years. There’s just one problem: Those numbers are old news. As CityLab’s Brentin Mock writes, despite worrying homicide rates in some major cities, there’s just no evidence to suggest a “dangerous permanent trend” is leading cities toward chaos.