NORC’s Real-Time Crime Tracker Is the First of Its Kind
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September 2024
The daily tracking tool is the most timely, thorough, and usable source of crime data in the U.S. available.
Few people realize or believe that U.S. crime is at a proven 50-year low. This is partly due to an absence of timely crime data, a gap that NORC’s new Live Crime Tracker now fills. Our tracker reports crime statistics in eight crime categories—aggravated assault, simple assault, burglary, homicide, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, robbery, and sexual offenses—from about 50 U.S. cities daily. By doing so, it provides policymakers, stakeholders, and the public with real-time data.
“Having timely, open data at their fingertips allows policymakers and other stakeholders to respond more swiftly and effectively to emerging public safety concerns,” said John Roman, director of NORC’s Center on Public Safety & Justice. “When crime statistics are delayed or unavailable, emotion and ideology drive policy, not facts.”
A NORC expert panel revealed big gaps in crime data, triggering the tracker’s creation.
The tracker is an outgrowth of NORC’s Firearms Data Infrastructure Expert Panel, led by Roman in 2019. The panel revealed huge gaps in the U.S. federal crime data system, including a lack of comprehensive and usable data. Currently, the FBI reports national crime statistics once a year. This means that even the newest reported data are outdated. In addition, not all law enforcement agencies submit their data to the FBI.
“Imagine if we had to wait until 2021 for data on COVID-19’s rapid spread in March 2020. It would have been far too late to respond effectively,” said Roman. “We need to be ahead of these types of trajectories when it comes to crime, too.”
“Having timely, open data at their fingertips allows policymakers and other stakeholders to respond more swiftly and effectively to emerging public safety concerns.”
A vast majority of the nation’s largest cities aren’t posting their crime statistics openly.
While building the tracker, our researchers found that only about 50 of the nation’s 200 most-populous cities had open sources of crime data and completely automated data systems, such as record management systems used by local law enforcement agencies. Our proprietary algorithm scrapes data from these 50 cities the moment they hit city databases, categorizing, normalizing, and presenting the data on our dashboard in multiple ways. Users can drill down on crime in their own cities, visualize and analyze crime trends over time, and compare crime and victimization across cities.
The Live Crime Tracker compiles data shared by local governments, and those data are sometimes incomplete. We decided to intentionally expose these gaps so that users can demand more accurate reporting from their local officials.
Researchers plan to expand and add depth to the tracker.
The tracker launched in June 2024 and continues to evolve. We plan to revisit our original list of 200 cities—to see which, if any, have opened their crime data sources—and look at smaller cities, many of which have higher crime rates per capita than big ones. We also plan to add more depth to the simple data on the tracker and provide estimates of crime’s costs and consequences.
“While our team is not alone in its commitment to bridging the crime data gap through innovation, our Live Crime Tracker is the only tool that covers every type of serious crime in a timely and nationally representative manner,” said Roman. “It gives law enforcement agencies, public officials, and community organizations the information they need when they need it.”
This article is from our flagship newsletter, NORC Now. NORC Now keeps you informed of the full breadth of NORC’s work, the questions we help our clients answer, and the issues we help them address.
