Veera Korhonen
Research expert covering United States data for society
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) - Statistics & Facts
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the FBI, was founded in 1908 to act as the U.S. government’s main law enforcement and domestic intelligence agency. The FBI is comprised of a large number of employees, including over 10,000 special agents in charge of investigative work and more than 20,000 professional staff members, and the Bureau’s expenditure was estimated to reach approximately nine billion U.S. dollars in 2020. The director of the FBI is appointed by the President of the United States and the organization operates within the Department of Justice, reporting directly to the U.S. Attorney General. However, federal law provides the FBI with the authority to investigate all federal crimes in the United States, which has caused controversy on whether the organization has exceeded their boundaries in the past.
Functions of the FBI
As the top federal law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI is responsible for overseeing national security, dealing with criminal activity such as terrorism, cybercrime, white collar crimes, public corruption, civil rights violations, and other major crimes. In recent years, the FBI’s role has expanded, particularly to include a greater focus on counterterrorism after the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center in 2001. In addition, the FBI is in charge of publishing an annual summary of all criminal activity in the U.S. through the Bureau’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. However, although the FBI is responsible for enforcing federal law and will investigate specific cases assigned to it, law enforcement in the United States still predominantly remains the responsibility of state and local governments.A crisis of credibility?
In recent years, the FBI has come under criticism for playing a part in public scandals including mishandling classified documents and failing to prevent external influence against elections. As a result, only 50 percent of Americans believed that the Bureau was doing a good job in 2022 and the FBI ranked low on trustworthiness for Americans when compared to other government agencies. In addition, faults have been found with the FBI’s crime reporting system, which relies on law enforcement agencies around the country to report crime data. However, many states have failed to report all their data, leading to incomplete figures in the FBI’s crime reports. As crime has been highlighted as a very important issue in midterm elections for many Americans, critics have said that the lack of accurate crime data from the FBI could be used to promote misinformation that could impact elections and falsely sway the beliefs of the American public.
