Crime stats are based entirely on what is reported by police. Crimes against minorities are downplayed or ignored, while reports by the wealthy are treated seriously, even when they are blatant lies. On top of this, there are regularly specific orders to change what is counted in the stats..
Wouldn't it be the opposite? Things like overpolicing in poor/minority communities, discriminatory laws, etc. would result in a higher rate of reported crimes in said communities. Minorities and poor people are over represented in the prison population because of said discrimination
Yes, this is more generally how it works. Crime stats come from a variety of places, too, not just the UCR. There's the NCVS as stated above and some police use the NIBRS. Plus advocacy groups have their own estimates. There is no central crime reporting that Trump can call to manipulate stats.
There doesn't need to be a central reporting system for manipulations to occur, and they occur regularly. I said things badly/wrongly.. but that's the thing I'm concerned with. How we are lied to about crime regularly at multiple levels. >.<
Also, people have almost no comprehension of the root causes of crime, which is why they believe that police prevent and solve crime, when they do very little of either.
The crime reported by law enforcement is only one source of crime data. For example, read about the NCVS, another important input into what data analysts are able to learn about crime in the US. The main reason people think crime is much higher than it is, is because local news hypes it up.
You are incorrect. Yes, I am a criminologist. That is not how anything works. While data reporting from local, state, and federal law enforcement are rolled up into aggregate numbers, advanced statistical methods are also used to correct for non-reporting departments and to drill down on anomalies.