Crime Overview - Violent Crime

In this graphic we are looking at about 12% of crimes — excluding, for the moment, lesser offenses; we shall deal with those later. In 2000, an estimated 956 people out of every 100,000 had some experience with serious violent crime — aggravated assault, robbery, and rape — or they were victims of murder or manslaughter. In this graphic, simple assault is excluded; if it were showing, the NCVS rate for violent crime for 2000 would be 2,736 — because 1,780 simple assaults where reported in the survey per 100,000 people.

Of the 956 reported serious violent crimes, 506 per 100,000 made it into the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. As shown in the previous panel, many crimes are not reported. The NCVS and FBI categories here are the same.

In the period shown, the NCVS rate peaked in 1974 and has been generally on the down-trend since. The FBI's peak came in 1991. Since then the rate has been steadily dropping, although preliminary data for 2001 indicate an up-tick. The estimated (NCVS) violent crime rate has been dropping uniformly and steeply since 1994.

When normalized as shown here — meaning that the values are expressed per 100,000 people — an increase in the violent crime means absolutely more violence not merely a greater number of crimes because the population is increasing. Similarly, a drop in violent crime is an absolute decrease in the "social war." Why does violent crime increase or decrease?

The explanation of crime is a hazardous and complex business. Much effort will be devoted to presenting speculations, correlations, and explanations in coming panels. To over-simplify, violent crime appears to be the consequence of economic stress and is associated more with poverty than wealth. It increases as social structures weaken or as mob wars break out over substances or rackets — prohibition of alcohol, the drug wars, gambling, prostitution. There is a demographic aspect to violent crime in that younger males are more prone to violent behavior; their numbers, as a percentile of the total population, change over time. Law enforcement actions (and consequences for the offenders) also have an influence of course.

Murder is the ultimate violent crime. The homicide rate — along with the two violent crime rates, on logarithmic scale, are shown to the left. Homicides are included in the data of the other curves. The murder rate resembles the FBI's violent crime rate in its shape and fluctuations. Murder and manslaughter represented 1.1% of reported violent crimes and 0.1% of all reported crimes in the FBI Crime Index. It has been declining annually since 1991 and at a more rapid rate than total violent crime.

Murder is an even smaller percentage of violent crime if we use the National Crime Victimization Survey data, include simple assault (which is not included in the curves) and use 2000 numbers to avoid the distortions created by the terrorist attack on 9/11/2001. The pie-chart to the left shows the results. The more serious the crime, the smaller its share of the total — thank heaven! The "robbery" included in this chart is of the armed variety — which, when failing, can result in murder.

We now complete this overview of the two different crime rates by looking at property crime in the next panel.

Sources: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, and National Criminal Victimization Survey, both accessible from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/welcome.html.