KBI Report: Violent crime up, property crime down
TOPEKA – The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) released an amended 2022 Kansas Crime Index Report. The report compiles crime statistics reported to the KBI by state and local law enforcement agencies throughout Kansas.
Violent crime analysis
The 2022 Kansas Crime Index Report indicated that violent crime in Kansas increased by 2.9% from 2021. It increased in each of the categories of violent crime except for murder, which saw a 2.9% decline from the previous year. A total of 13,808 violent crimes were reported in Kansas in the categories of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault and battery.
Violent crime in Kansas has been steadily rising each year since 2014, only declining slightly in 2021. Violent crime in 2022 was 17.5% above the 10-year average.
Property crime analysis
In 2022, overall property crimes declined by 4.1%. In Kansas, property offenses have steadily declined since 2017. Property crime offenses are assumed to be underreported to law enforcement.
Data from the Kansas Crime Index report is derived from standard offense and arrest reports submitted to the Kansas Incident Based Reporting System (KIBRS) by local law enforcement agencies across Kansas. The 2022 report required amending after the Wichita Police Department (WPD) alerted the KBI that their agency’s crime data appeared incomplete after the 2022 crime index was published. In working with the WPD, a system error was identified. This error was not immediately noticed, causing thousands of offenses to not be counted by KIBRS in the July crime index report. Since then, the KBI and the WPD have worked closely together to ensure all reports were received.
In order to account for these additional reports, the KIBRS unit reopened the system for 2022 submissions. As a result, 4,979 additional reports of major violent crime and property crime offenses were collected from multiple agencies across Kansas. These reports came from the erred submission, as well as from agencies who were either catching up on crime data submissions not entered by the deadline, or who had additional crimes reported to their agency for 2022, after the original report was published. Since the new reports had a substantial impact on our understanding of crime in Kansas, the report was amended and republished.
“Upon reviewing the crime data released by the KBI, the Wichita Police Department promptly alerted KBI to the inaccuracies. Collaborating with KBI, we pinpointed the issue and rectified it,” said Wichita Police Chief Joe Sullivan. “Furthermore, we implemented extra checks in coordination with KBI to ensure that submitted data undergoes thorough end-to-end verification upon receipt. WPD’s partnership with KBI is strong and incredibly important to ensuring the safety of our community,” Sullivan said.
“When we recognized how many offenses weren’t represented in the annual crime report, we knew we had a responsibility to let the public, the Legislature, and our law enforcement partners know that what we understood about crime in Kansas had changed,” said KBI Director Tony Mattivi. “For example, in the report from July, we saw a slight decrease in violent crime statewide, and with these additional offenses being accounted for, we now know Kansas saw a slight increase in violent crime in 2022.”
“The KBI is grateful to Chief Sullivan and the Wichita Police Department for their partnership. Despite the initial reporting problems, Kansans will have a greater understanding of crime in our state due to these collaborative efforts,” Mattivi added.
KIBRS is an outdated system that operates with severe constraints on how statistics can be collected, utilized and interpreted. However, the KBI has been overseeing a major upgrade of KIBRS to enhance this statewide crime information database. Once completed the new system will significantly improve crime reporting and crime trend analysis in Kansas.
Find the amended 2022 Kansas Crime Index report, and previous year’s statistics at: https://www.kansas.gov/kbi/stats/stats_crime.shtml.
NOTE: Data from the Kansas Crime Index report is dependent on victims reporting crimes to law enforcement. The report is compiled to provide a historical assessment and snapshot of crime trends. It is often not possible to draw further interpretations or conclusions from the data. The KBI cautions against using data to make direct comparisons between jurisdictions. Often these comparisons are not valid as the factors influencing crime vary widely between communities.