ABSTRACT
In an effort to take a bite out of the budgets of other governmental agencies, the Department of Justice and its law enforcement bureaucracies, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Institutes of Justice, consistently inflate or bias reports of data on crime. Whenever law enforcement officials, politicians, or judges want to justify "getting tough on crime," they roll out the timeworn comparisons supposedly demonstrating that the murder rate in the United States is dramatically higher than in any other industrialized nation, especially the Scandinavian countries. The FBI is masterful in disseminating its information. News releases are carefully prepared to highlight the most alarming statistics that can be culled from the reports. When the gathering and reporting of crime rate data is in the hands of the bureaucracies whose public image and financial wellbeing depend on what the statistics look like, it is safe to assume that the agencies' data are suspect.
