Crime Is At Record Lows

[mrjarrell]

So why does Obama want to fund more cops on the streets? He provided almost a billion dollars in the "stimulus" for more cops, despite the fact that crime is at an all time low. When factories don't have serious demand they cut work force numbers to save money and make the company stronger. With budgets constrained as they are, due to falling revenues do we really need as any more cops on the street? Someone has an agenda, and it's based on fear mongering. For some reason American believe crime is out of control, yet the facts say otherwise.

Crime is down and has been falling for years.

The year 2009 was a grim one for many Americans, but there was one pleasant surprise amid all the drear: Citizens, though ground down and nerve-racked by the recession, still somehow resisted the urge to rob and kill one another, and they resisted in impressive numbers. Across the country, FBI data show that crime last year fell to lows unseen since the 1960s - part of a long trend that has seen crime fall steeply in the United States since the mid-1990s.
At the same time, however, another change has taken place: a steady rise in the percentage of Americans who believe crime is getting worse. The vast majority of Americans - nearly three-quarters of the population - thought crime got worse in the United States in 2009, according to Gallup’s annual crime attitudes poll. That, too, is part of a running trend. As crime rates have dropped for the past decade, the public belief in worsening crime has steadily grown. The more lawful the country gets, the more lawless we imagine it to be.
The implications for the country at large are stark. Democracy is based on an informed public calling upon its representatives to address problems facing their society. If we believe crime is on the march in the streets all over the country, it influences our beliefs on critical issues
from gun control to sentencing laws, from how we run our prisons to how much money we spend on law enforcement. Misinformation on the part of the public makes for bad lawmaking on the part of the government.
How did we get this idea in our heads? Why do we persist in believing the United States is inexorably sliding into lawlessness when we should be rejoicing that exactly the opposite is happening? The short answer is that we’ve been taking our cues on crime from a host of things that are both abstract and wholly unrelated to crime. And perhaps, by understanding why we’ve come to believe what we believe, we can take some steps toward mending our relationship with reality.
Take murder. The murder rate rose and fell over the 20th century, climbing to an early peak in 1933, then dropping sharply and staying low through the Depression, World War II, and into the 1960s. It rose to a record level in 1974, broke that record in 1980, and stayed prodigiously bloody through the early ’90s. This is when Bill Clinton boosted funding for local police forces, and police began experimenting with radical new approaches to policing, such as those employed in the so-called Boston Miracle. In 1994, the murder rate started to fall, and it’s been falling ever since. Rape, robbery, and aggravated assault have dropped along with it. Last year was no exception. According to preliminary FBI data, the murder rate dropped 10 percent from 2008 to 2009, robbery fell 6.5 percent, aggravated assault fell 3.2 percent, auto theft was down a whopping 18.7 percent.
But as the crime rate has dropped, Americans have missed the news. The number of people who told Gallup that crime is getting worse climbed to 74 percent last year, a figure higher than any year since the carnage of the early ’90s.

More at the source.

 

[Panama]

Then somebody needs to tell channels 6, 8, 13, 59 in Indy to stop lying about all the shootings and robberies they report on daily.

I have heard the "crime is down" before and I find it extremely hard to believe.
Not sayin' it ain't so, just wonderin' if it is some kind of numbers juggle or sumthin'?

You never hear local LEO's saying crime is down............maybe when they do I will believe it, maybe.

 

[rambone]

Can this be confirmed through independent data? I am also surprised.

 

[mrjarrell]

Can this be confirmed through independent data? I am also surprised.

Depends on what you mean by independent. Everyone uses the DOJ figures.
Here are the figures for 2008, the '09 figures are still preliminary here.

For Release December 21, 2009

Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation reported a decrease of 4.4 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention for the first six months of 2009 when compared with figures reported for the same time in 2008. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The number of property crimes in the United States from January to June of 2009 decreased 6.1 percent when compared with data from the same time period in 2008. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime, but data for arson are not included in property crime totals. Figures for 2009 indicate that arson decreased 8.2 percent when compared to 2008 figures from the same time period.​

The data presented in Tables 1 and 2 indicate the percent change in offenses known to law enforcement for the first 6 months of 2009 compared to the first half of 2008 by population group and region, respectively. Table 3 reflects the percent change within the Nation for consecutive years (each year compared to the prior year). Table 4 presents the number of offenses known to law enforcement for agencies having a resident population of 100,000 and over and providing 6 months of complete data for 2009. In addition, Table 4 presents 6 months of 2008 data, where available, as a point of comparison. All data in this Report are preliminary.

Folks are being led around by their noses on the issue. Crime has been steadily falling now for 2 decades. TPTB want you to live in fear. Then they can come rescue you.

 

[eldirector]

Here is just Indiana, over the last several decades:
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/incrime.htm

Give me a minute, and I'll generate some pretty graphs!

 

[groovatron]

Depends on what you mean by independent. Everyone uses the DOJ figures.
Here are the figures for 2008, the '09 figures are still preliminary here.

Folks are being led around by their noses on the issue. Crime has been steadily falling now for 2 decades. TPTB want you to live in fear. Then they can come rescue you.

I can't disagree with this. Great article...thanks

 

[eldirector]

And... here you go.

Draw your own conclusions!

 

[leftsock]

I don't know if I feel comfortable saying that "crime is down" based on UCR data. "Crime" means different things to different people, and the UCR's data is lacking in many areas.

Critics of the UCR note they do not accurately reflect crime rates in that they can only list crimes reported to law enforcement agencies. Also, should a number of crimes be connected, they only list the most serious one. For instance, if someone were murdered during a car theft, they would only list murder. Lastly, the list is biased in the reporting of rape. The UCR defines forcible rape as, "the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will." It does not list rapes against men, nor does it list same-sex rape.

Uniform Crime Reports - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Event the DoJ says:

It is incumbent upon all data users to become as well educated as possible about how to understand and quantify the nature and extent of crime in the United States and in any of the more than 17,000 jurisdictions represented by law enforcement contributors to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program.

Variables Affecting Crime - Crime in the United States 2008

I guess we could say that crimes reported to the DoJ from law enforcement agencies are down or are less severe. Does this mean that less crimes are actually occurring? Perhaps the agencies are downgrading incidents, "lost" them, or ignoring them entirely.

... police recently reveal they were missing many crime report from a single year.

Lakeland Ledger - Google News Archive Search

What am I trying to get across? Let's not depend completely on UCR data to get a picture of what's going on.

 

[rambone]

Are we truly at record lows though?

 

[jdhaines]

Has anyone read "State of Fear"?

 

[eldirector]

Record? No, I don't think so. Though, it does appear that the last 10 years were better than the previous 10 years. All depends on how the data is sliced-n-diced....

 

[Panama]

Crime is like surgery, it's all minor, until, it involves you or your loved ones.

I do not live in fear, but I am also smart enough, not to take a stroll down Keystone Ave on foot at 3:00 am!

One could also say, stagecoach deaths are at an all time low too.
But I'll be stickin' to my F150 just the same, if you catch my drift.

 

[Yeah]

The data is multi-variate, which is why most simple analyses fail. It must be compared against not only population figures but also against the crimes possible to commit...a "government provides the crimes people just persure them" sort of thing.

Crime is up, generally, but is it up as much as crimes is the question.

 

[tradertator]

The last thing I want to see budget cuts on, are public safety.

 

[Yeah]

The last thing I want to see budget cuts on, are public safety.

If we leave aside the question of what business the Obama administration has funding cops on US streets, we are left with the task of figuring out what effect spending has on crime. What is the return per dollar spent toward putting more cops on streets? Are there other areas where those dollars would have a greater impact?

I don't expect we will ever know. These arguments are seldom won or lost on the quantitative battlefield. Title XI of the 1994 Crime bill is a good example because we have good data before, during, and after it sunset. It had absolutely no impact, but it is still used as a foil in the political arena, any time someone shoots up their workplace.

 

[tradertator]

Not seeing the connection you are drawing between Obama and law enforcement. Most law enforcement agencies are funded and budgeted on a much smaller level (ie state, county, city).

 

[tradertator]

Not seeing the connection you are drawing between Obama and law enforcement. Most law enforcement agencies are funded and budgeted on a much smaller level (ie state, county, city).