Crime Overview - Indexes Of Crime, Violent Crime, Property Crime, Other Crimes And Offenses, Drug War Trends: Arrests

Picture crime as the upper portion of a gradually rising mountain of lawlessness. The low foothills of this mountain are traffic violations too numerous to count — no one in fact does so at the national level. Next come offenses serious enough to merit arrest. The bulk of all arrests, however — for some 20 broad categories — are not serious enough to make it into the crime rate reported by the FBI — or the National Criminal Victimization Survey, another major tool of measurement. The upper reaches of this mountain — and at this height the number of incidents is lower but the seriousness of the crimes has soared — are the so-called "index crimes" that law enforcement agencies use to see whether or not "crime is up," as they say, or "the crime rate is dropping." The blood-red tip of this mountain is the most violent of crimes, homicide. The numbers are tiny, but the impact ultimate.

So much for measurement. But this mountain also has a shadowy companion, difficult to see. We can't measure it properly. A very large percentage of all crimes, except homicide, go unreported — but the government collects data to give us some indistinct idea of that other mountain hidden in the fog of people's fears, shame (in the case of rape), or indifference to smaller losses.

We begin this chapter by trying to give dimension to these mountains. We look at how crime is reported. Two major series are available. Both show that the crime rate is trending down. We deal first with violent crime — which is down since 1973 as measured by reported victimizations and up slightly as measured by police statistics. Next we look at property crime — which is down by both measures. In these introductory panels, we also characterize the components that make up the official, "indexed" crimes that yield the crime rate.

Next we turn to the much broader range of lesser offenses, measured by arrests. They make up more than 80% of all arrests. Drug-related crimes fall into this non-indexed category. Too bad. The dynamism in this field (arrests, budgets, incarcerations) owes much to the war on drugs. We note, in passing, that alcohol-related offenses are still substantially higher than drug offenses.

Because drugs are so much in the news, we take a look at trends in drug-related arrests and note that most arrests are for possession but most incarcerations are for sale or manufacture of illegal substances. We wind up with a look back 40 years and see the crime rate rising, then flattening, then dropping — as incarceration rates begin to climb and then to soar.

In the next two panels, we take a look at the offenders and notice that women are participating more in crime and that blacks are a disproportionate component of the so-called correctional population — people on probation or parole, in prison or in jail.

The last two panels attempt to portray the Justice System and its three major components — Police Protection, Judicial and Legal institutions, and Corrections. These exist at every level of government and get more or less emphasis depending on the level. We use employment and expenditures as two measures.

To summarize this chapter in a word or two, we might say that (1) lawlessness has increased sharply in the last two decades, by any measure, but that (2) the crime rate has been falling in recent years — because (3) substantial amounts of money have been spent and large numbers of people now work at preventing or punishing crime. As a consequence (4) the correctional population is at unprecedented levels — especially among blacks. These efforts have led to (5) spiraling expenditures on all aspects of criminal justice, but mostly on its tail end — legal institutions and corrections, not so much police. Finally, (6) women are showing their liberation by going into all kinds of activities outside the home — including crime.