A bright ray of sunlight shone in May when “Crime in the United States,” a preliminary annual report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was released for 2009. A series of tables show a continuing downward trend in the overall number of crimes reported across the nation for the third straight year in a row. This happy result seems particularly surprising given the severity of the economic recession and the stresses and criminal behavior ordinarily associated with prolonged high unemployment and home foreclosures. The number of violent crimes (like rape, murder and aggravated assault) declined by 5.5 percent in comparison with 2008, a statistically significant drop, and fell in both cities and rural areas. In fact, cities with more than a million people saw their violent crime rate fall by 6.9 percent, higher than the national average. There was one exception to the dropping crime rates, however: the number of murders reported in small cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000. There the murder rate rose by 5.3 percent.
According to the report, property crimes also decreased by 4.9 percent overall. But in cities with more than a million inhabitants, property crimes fell by 7.9 percent. Motor vehicle thefts fell by the widest single margin: 17.2 percent. And even the rate of arson fell across the country by 10.4 percent.
The F.B.I. report is purely statistical and makes no attempt to explain why reported crimes are down. Until sociologists or others begin to explain the reasons, Americans ought to feel good about the falling crime rates during this tense time in our national history. Does anyone have information (not just idle speculation—there’s too much of that going around already) about WHY we are experiencing a decline in crime? I’d love to learn.
Karen Sue Smith
In my area of NY, I was able to document something, from the persepctive of a lawyer, of course, not a statistician.
In the year before an election, police officers are given orders to take investigatory reports, not incident reports when they respond to most crime. Investigatory reports are not included in statistics given to the state office that collects stats and then gives them to the FBI. In NY, incident reports are counted.
I heard this from officers, saw it in action too, but I also heard it from an insurance company which became very familiar with the problem of getting accurate reports to support claims.
I'd love to see a statistician compare crime rates and election calendars.
There are a heck of a lot more poor people in our prisons than people with means.
Since my first sociology course in high school, I was taught that poverty is the main reason for crime. Now, with poverty at a very high level, crime is actually decreasing. I wonder what the sociologist will make of it?
The lack of morality causes crime. One does not lack or lose his/her morals merely because one is poor. Surely the number of impoverished people who do not commit crimes dwarfs the number of impoverished people who commit crimes; just as the number of wealthy criminals are dwarfed by the number of wealthy law-abiding people. The commission of a crime is an act of free will, perhaps tinged by a comparative lack of money (at any income level), not an inevitable act caused by poverty.