The Nation’s Crime Measures with Alex Piquero Artwork

The Jeff-alytics Podcast

Can data uncover the real story of crime and justice in America?

Jeff Asher—nationally recognized crime data analyst, co-founder of AH Datalytics, co-creator of the Real Time Crime Index, and author of the Jeff-alytics Substack—sits down with policymakers, academics, journalists, and everyday people to reveal what the numbers actually show. Each episode challenges the myths we believe, exposes the gap between headlines and reality, and asks: what happens when we finally see crime clearly?

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The Jeff-alytics Podcast

The Nation’s Crime Measures with Alex Piquero

January 07, 2026

In this engaging conversation, former Bureau of Justice Statistics director Alex Piquero shares his journey from playing in a rock band to becoming a prominent figure in criminology and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. We chat about the importance of crime data, particularly the National Crime Victimization Survey, and the challenges of public perception versus reality in crime trends. Piquero also highlights the intersection of sports and crime research, emphasizing the need for accurate data collection and communication.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

How Alex Piquero's journey into criminology was serendipitous.
What is the role of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in crime data collection?
Top revelations from the National Crime Victimization Survey.
How all data has inherent weaknesses that must be acknowledged.
What are the implications of crime data reporting in the US not being mandatory?
The importance of visual communication in crime data reporting.
Public perception of crime often differs from statistical reality.
What is an essential point of balancing data with human stories in discussions about crime?
The interesting trends revealed in Piquero's research, which intersects sports and crime.
How Alex views the future of crime data collection with potential budget cuts looming.

Alex R. Piquero is Professor in the Department of Sociology & Criminology and Arts & Sciences Distinguished Scholar the University of Miami and previously served as the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, one of the nation’s thirteen federal statistical agencies (appointed by President Biden, June 2022). Dr. Piquero is a nationally and internationally recognized criminologist with more than 26 years of experience. Over the course of his career, Dr. Piquero has given congressional testimony on evidence-based crime prevention practices and has provided counsel and support to several local, state, national and international criminal justice agencies and elected leaders. His expertise ranges from criminal careers to criminal justice policy and crime prevention to the intersection of race/ethnicity and crime, with a focus on quantitative methodology. Dr. Piquero has published over 500 scholarly articles and several books and is among the most highly cited criminologists in the world. He also served as editor of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology and the Justice Evaluation Journal. He is a Fellow of both the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. In 2019, he received the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Bruce Smith Sr. Award for outstanding contributions to criminal justice, and in 2020, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology of the American Society of Criminology.