Not that US institutions don't lie, but our bureaucracy and government oversight systems come with the benefit that many of the things we track and document can be verified. Other countries simply lie. The numbers you get are not a rough approximation of reality; they're simply part of whatever story that country wants to tell.
Crime rate is a statistic for which a majority of countries provide numbers that are completely dissociated from reality.
You can, of course, take the numbers seriously, as if the statistics are being published in good faith. Unless you have some sort of independent oversight, however, that isn't beholden to or biased by the country being assessed, then taking those numbers seriously is probably a silly thing to do.
The US gets lots of independent verification and validation of crime statistics. They're frequently analyzed at local, state, and federal level by journalists, students, activists, authors, and government officials. At every level an official number is published, it gets challenged, so there are incentives keeping the politicians and bureaucrats honest. They get slammed when they get caught lying, and they get caught lying because the public and the media keep track of things and demand accountability.
Some stuff, like total officer involved shootings, dog shootings by officials, abuses of power, and things of that nature, don't get publicly disclosed much of the time, so there are gaps in what we know and what officials are required to disclose.
The US isn't perfect, but you can get pretty good numbers that actually correlate with reality. Even other western countries don't always have trustworthy reporting and accounting for government actions. The best you'll ever get is a glowing narrative.
Singapore has very low levels of corruption. Even lower than in the United States. You can choose to dismiss them, but I think their numbers are reliable.
Crime rate is a statistic for which a majority of countries provide numbers that are completely dissociated from reality.
You can, of course, take the numbers seriously, as if the statistics are being published in good faith. Unless you have some sort of independent oversight, however, that isn't beholden to or biased by the country being assessed, then taking those numbers seriously is probably a silly thing to do.
The US gets lots of independent verification and validation of crime statistics. They're frequently analyzed at local, state, and federal level by journalists, students, activists, authors, and government officials. At every level an official number is published, it gets challenged, so there are incentives keeping the politicians and bureaucrats honest. They get slammed when they get caught lying, and they get caught lying because the public and the media keep track of things and demand accountability.
Some stuff, like total officer involved shootings, dog shootings by officials, abuses of power, and things of that nature, don't get publicly disclosed much of the time, so there are gaps in what we know and what officials are required to disclose.
The US isn't perfect, but you can get pretty good numbers that actually correlate with reality. Even other western countries don't always have trustworthy reporting and accounting for government actions. The best you'll ever get is a glowing narrative.