Lesser Crimes & Offenses - Lesser Offenses In Perspective

We begin our look at lesser crimes and offenses with another overview. Up to this point we have dealt with crimes included in the FBI's official crime rate; it is divided into the violent and property crime components. In Chapter 1, in the panel entitled Other Crimes and Offenses, we saw that the official crime rate covers but a fraction of all offenses. There we saw data for 2000. We extend that view here to the time period 1984 to 2001. Crimes and offenses are measured by arrests. In order to make the data comparable from one year to the next, arrests are expressed per 100,000 population of those aged 18 and older. This convention controls for an increase in the overall population.

We see first, again, that the official crime rate is a fraction of total crimes and offenses. Those are measured by the top curve, showing "all arrests." Note, please, that traffic violations are excluded. "All arrests" represents the sum of the official "crime rate" arrests and arrests for "other crimes and offenses." We are showing curves with solid symbols and with open ones. Those with open ones represent data that exclude all arrests for drug law violations — be it for possession or for trafficking. This allows us to see the impact of the "war on drugs" on the overall rate of "lawlessness" in the country over this period of time.

What are the important trends here? We see that serious, "official" crime is down sharply in this period, by 20.9%. We see that all crimes and offenses are down a little (1.5%). A closer look shows that if drug-related arrests are excluded, total arrests are down significantly, by 7.2%. If we examine the "all other" category, the lesser crimes and offenses covered in this chapter, we see a 3.4% increase in arrests between 1984 and 2001, but, again, if drug arrests are excluded, this "lesser" category is also down by 3.5%.

The conclusion is that in our recent history crimes and offenses are down decisively, especially the crimes labeled "serious." Whatever increase we are seeing is due to the nation's war on drugs. This alone leads us to devote a chapter to that subject. Here we shall not be discussing drugs; they will be covered in some depth in Chapter 6.

In using phrasing like "lesser" crimes and offenses, we don't intend to minimize the crimes/offenses committed. They include victimless crimes, like gambling, but also offenses such as spousal and child abuse, simple assault, and property crimes like fraud that can strip helpless old people of all of their means. The terminology is merely intended to signal that the government does not view these crimes as severe enough to track in its official index.

The graphic also shows up another pattern — the wave-like shape of the arrest statistics. In 2001 we were reaching downward to a level reached in 1984 or below. In 1984, total arrests stood at 6,714 per 100,000 of adult population; in 2001 that value was 6,612. In between, total arrests peaked in 1989 at 7,869 and again in 1995 at 7,761. Lawlessness is a cyclical phenomenon. It reflects, in a kind of boiled-down essence, many factors of a cultural and economic nature, including changes in the age-groups that make up the population, but demographics do not explain it all. Many factors are at work.

Next, let's take a closer look at lesser crimes and offenses and see what is behind the generally down-trending curves shown here. Aggregates hide interesting details.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports, 1984 through 2001. Most recent issues are accessible at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm.