Violent Crime - Violent Crimes Are Down

Violent crime? It's the stuff we watch on our TVs, it's the suspense that keeps us turning the pages of our mystery novels. The reality of violent crime is quite something else, of course. It is a brutal act that shatters lives, a jarring deed during the commission of which the offender inflicts serious harm or death on others. Starting from the "top," violent crimes include murder, rape, armed robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. The aggravated kind involves a weapon — gun, knife, crowbar. Simple assault is with the body — fists, fingernails, elbows, knees, and feet.

The graph shows the rates at which each of these crimes is committed every year. The measure used is incidents per 1,000 people of the population, aged 12 years or older. Tracking crime as a rate is useful because it eliminates the influence of demographic factors — and of population growth — on the measurement of crime. Rates are comparable over periods of time. The chart also shows the rate for all violent crimes combined as reported by the Justice Department's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).

Violent crime is down and down decisively. For the period 1973 to 2000 all violent crime is down by 43%. Individual categories are also down, simple assault by 31%, aggravated assault by 54%, armed robbery by 53%, rape by 76%, and murder by 42%. Over this span of time there were two periods in which the rates rose, between 1977 and 1982 and again between 1990 and 1994. After 1994 the rates have dropped sharply and across all violent crime categories.

Why this downward trend? There are numerous theories. Three of the most prominent are based on demographics, law enforcement, and the good economy.

1. Changing demographics have favored a decline. The age cohorts trailing the aging Baby Boom are smaller. Those most involved in criminal activity, the 18 to 34 age group, are less numerous. Hence violent crime is down.

2. We have become much harder on the criminal. Unprecedented numbers are now behind bars. Stricter gun control laws, tougher mandatory sentencing laws, and the intensified war on drugs have been succeeding in disarming criminals or getting them out of circulation. We have put more officers on the street. We have spent the necessary money.

3. The vibrant economy of the middle to late 1990s has increased economic opportunity for everyone, including the criminal classes. Property crime is down and hence also violent crime.

Research into each of these explanations continues at a healthy pace. The issue is, of course, far from decided. In late 2001, while we were consumed with our concerns about terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11, early signs showed that the decline in crime might be over. Violent crime might even but up slightly¹. As usually, vast social phenomena, like the crime rate, are not subject to simplistic explanations — not by three theories or even by thirty. Too many social, political, economic, and psychological forces impinge on behavior.

Next, we turn to a review of homicide rates over the last century.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Criminal Victimization Survey, "Violent Crime Trends, 1973-2001," August 2002, available online at http://www/ojp/usdoj.gov/glance/tables/viortrdtab.htm. Oliver, Willard M. Review of The Crime Drop, published online without a date and available at http://www.scja.net/oliver2.html.