Maine’s crime report for 2021 released
STATEWIDE — The Maine Department of Public Safety released its crime report for 2021.
The department reports that there were 44,513 total crimes in the state in 2021, with over 1,500 of those being violent crimes.
19 people were the victims of murder or manslaughter.
There were also 26,290 crimes against property, which is any criminal act that destroys another’s property, .
However, there is currently no way to compare these numbers to the rest of the country.
According to Michael Sauschuck, the commissioner for the Department of Public Safety, comparing this year’s crime rates to previous years has become more difficult because crime reporting data in Maine has moved to a new incident based reporting system to comply with the national standard implemented in 2021.
“We’re used to certain benchmarks and certain statistics we can go back to, and this is a completely different system,” said Sauschuck. “We always hope for that apples to apples comparison so we can say we have this many this year and you have this many this year, but this is like apples to coconuts.”
Despite a lack of data, Sauschuck believes that the state is still doing well.
“I still think we’re one of the safest states in the country, we just don’t have hard data to confirm it,” said Sauschuck.
The previous system, known as uniform crime reporting, analyzed 8 criminal categories, while the new method reports on 29. Sauschuck says that adjusting to this change means it may take years to develop accurate data comparisons.
Sauschuck says that moving away from uniform crime reporting and creating more detailed reports will have a positive impact in the long run.
“The intent here is to have some improved quality control,” said Sauschuck. “So you’ll have a lot more information on the back end of this than we currently did, or at least we did last year with uniform crime reporting, so there’s definitely very strong benefits moving forward.”
Sauschuck says that the new system is a “living” data set, which means that data may change over time.
To view the most recent data, visit me.beyond2020.com.
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