Property Crime - Introduction To Property Crime: The Arrests

The last panel showed those who reported in surveys that they had been victimized by property crimes. This panel examines trends in arrests. Arrest rates are typically lower than victimization rates — people do not report crimes, and offenders are frequently not caught.

Property crime arrests are down 17.7% from 1973 to 2000, from 721.4 to 593.6 per 100,000 people. There have been several noticeable spikes in the arrest rate that need to be addressed. In one year, 1973 to 1974, arrests jumped 26% from 696.1 to 878.3 per 100,000 people. The rate fell 11.4% from 1982 (its peak) to 1984. Property crime spikes as the economy tanks. The arrest rate jumped during the recessions of 1974, 1980, 1981-1983, and in the wake of the 1990 recession. The rate fell during the rest of the 1990s as the economy boomed. The most frequently committed crime, larceny, gives the property crime rate its shape.

Arrests for burglaries fell 48.7% and for motor vehicle theft fell 35.6%. Burglary arrests have been on the decline since hitting a peak of 232.9 arrests in 1982. Are burglars switching to other crimes? Or is there something about the American lifestyle — people now lock their doors and more homes have security features — that makes burglary a more unattractive crime? (A future panel will look burglary in detail.) Motor vehicle arrests, by contrast, have fluctuated over the 30 year period. There were 84.2 per 100,000 arrests in 1971. By 1975, the rate had fallen to 67.1 arrests. It rose and fell in the 1980s, climbed to its peak of 91.4 people in 1991 before it began a steady decline. We shall look at car thefts in more detail as well.

Arrests for larcenies and thefts fell only 1% in the period, the decline coming late in the 1990s. Theft is here to stay. People will probably always shoplift or steal a bike or snatch a cellular phone out of someone's unlocked car. Property crime dropped significantly in the prosperous 1990s: From 1997 to 2000, larcenies fell 24%, burglaries fell 23% and motor vehicle thefts fell 15%.

Arson Arrests per 100,000 People, 1979-2000

Arrests are down for arson, as well, which was not included as an index property crime until October 1978. The rate of arrest has fallen 30% from 1979 to 2000. The motivations for this type of crime are often more complex than for other forms of property crime. Arsons hide boredom, cover up crime, or express psychosocial problems. This crime will be examined more closely in an upcoming panel.

Arrests represent only a fraction of offenses — less than a fifth in the case of property crime. In 1999, 11.7 million property crimes, excluding arson, were reported to police. Of that total, 17.5% were "cleared" by an arrest. The clearance rate has fallen in recent years from 18.1% in 1996. The low point came in 1980, when only 16.5% of property crimes resulted in an arrest. During the 1980s and 1990s, the rate hovered between 17.5 and 18%. The number of reported cases fluctuated from a low of 9.9 million to a high of 11.7 million. But reported crimes are not total crimes. Many go unreported. We take up that subject in another segment.

The next panels will look at each type of property crime.

Source:, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2000, Washington D.C., USGPO, 2001, p. 353.