Hello and welcome to the 538 Politics Podcast. I'm Gail and Dr. Rick.

The FBI released nationwide crime numbers from 2020 this week, and they're likely to

contribute to the country's already tense debate over crime and policing. The murder rate

increased by 30% from 2019 to 2020, meaning 4,901 more people were killed in homicides

in 2020 than the year prior. That amounts to the largest single year increase since records

began in 1960. Guns were used in 76% of the killings, also the highest rate on record.

The broader context is also notable. The murder spike was far bigger than the overall

change in violent crime. That rose about 5%, and property crimes fell about 8%. Murder

rates are still significantly below what they were throughout the 1990s. Politicians were

already debating what to do about the increase in murders before this data was released,

and that will only continue now. Today we're going to unpack these numbers and try to figure

out what they can and can't tell us. We're also going to look at Americans' perception

of crime rates and compare that to the evidence. Here with me to do that is crime analyst,

Jeff Asher, he is co-founder of AH Data Lidix and has worked as a crime analyst with

the City of New Orleans and analysts with the federal government. Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. I mentioned some of the top line numbers there, but there's a lot

of data in this report on geography, on different types of crimes. What does that broader picture

tell us about what happened in 2020? Well, the broader picture is that we had an increase

in murder. It was far and away, no matter how you slice it, percent number rate, the largest

one year increase that we've ever had, but compared to where we were in the 90s, we're

20-30% lower in terms of rate, where we were in 2014, we're about 40-50% higher than we

were in terms of rate. It's sort of how you want to look at it is really what you're

...