Lesser Crimes & Offenses - Lesser Offenses: Abuse Is Up

Four other broad categories encompass the balance of "lesser crimes and offenses": prostitution and non-rape sexual offenses, curfew violations and loitering, offenses against the family and children, and vagrancy. Not included, as already mentioned, is the largest category, "all other offenses"; these are violations of all manner of state laws and local ordinances that do not fit one of the other categories. We have also excluded the category of "runaways," teens who have run away from home and whose apprehensions are measured as arrests.

Data presented here are once more ratios. Thus in 2001, 83 people out of each population cluster of 100,000 people, aged 18 or older, were arrested for prostitution or some sexual offense excluding rape. The same ratio for 1984 was 122 people. Over this period, arrests were down 31.6% based on the ratio. Actual arrests in 1984 were 210,000 and in 2001 172,682, a decline of 17.1%, but population grew between those years; the normalized decline is thus significantly greater. Using ratios accounts for changes in population between 1984 and 2001 (and years in between) so that data can be compared without distortion one year to the next.

In 2001, the category of prostitution and sex offenses (not including rape) was made up 47% of prostitution and 53% of sex offenses, the exact reverse of the data in 1984. Women are predominantly arrested for prostitution, men for sex offenses. Both categories are down, based on population ratio, prostitution down 40%, sex offenses 22%. We were not reaching new lows in 2001. Data from 1975 indicate a rate, per 100,000, of 80 arrests for these offenses and 99 for the year 1979. In these matters no permanent victories are won. We are just catching the bottom of a wave again — this particular trough possibly caused by some combination of loosening sexual mores and consequent easier access to casual sex and/or the specter of HIV/AIDS, which is making the public cautious.

Curfew violations and loitering are not further divided in the FBI data. If these offenses are mostly loitering, those who do so must clearly have visible means of support — because arrests for vagrancy are down. Does homelessness have something to do with these two curves? Or more teenagers out on the streets? The subject deserves deeper analysis, but the means for doing so are not readily at hand. We shall defer until, perhaps, a future edition of this work.

The other data series that draws the eye is the sharp rise in arrests for what the FBI labels "offenses against the family and children." These offenses include quite a range of problems — from neglect or the abuse of children and elders to spousal abuse. As we noted in Chapter 2, homicide of intimates is sharply down. Here we see the incidence of lesser offenses within the family rising rather dramatically, especially in an environment of generally declining rates of arrests.

The phenomenon may well be due to the more frequent reporting of crimes/offenses that the police, in the past, did not hear about. The subject of abuse has been in the news for years now. Adult and child protection agencies have come into being as a consequence of law. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), was originally enacted in 1974 and amended in 1996. In 1984, Congress reauthorized the Older Americans Act and strengthened the role of state and area agencies. Extensive studies have been conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. One of these, the Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect¹, reports rising incidence of cases much in line with arrest statistics.

Some aspects of these subjects have been covered in other chapters. For instance, intimate homicide was covered in Chapter 2, Violent Crime; fraud has been discussed in Chapter 3, Property Crime; we shall deal with drugs in Chapter 6. In what follows in this chapter, other aspects of "lesser offenses" — especially those that point at trends — will be explored in a little more detail.

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.