U.S. Violent Crime Rates Lowest Recorded

Ronald Bailey | September 14, 2009

The FBI has just released its estimates for 2008 crime rates. The violent crime rate peaked in 1991 at 758.2 crimes per 100,000 population. Violent crimes include homicide, aggravated assaults, and forcible rapes. In 2008, the violent crime rate dropped to its lowest recorded level of 454.5 per 100,000 people. In addition, the property crime rate has also fallen from its 1991 peak of 5,140.2 per 100,000 to its lowest recorded rate of 3,212.5 per 100,000 in 2008.

For complete FBI crime rate tabulations go here. 

Comments

Tomcat1066|9.14.09 @ 1:10PM|#

That can't be. I mean, we've got...you know...guns and shit. The gun grabbers always say that guns cause violent crime after all.

|9.14.09 @ 1:15PM|#

Must be because all of those violent drug users are in jail. Clearly this indicates that we should increase our incarceration rates.

Gilbert Martin|9.14.09 @ 1:17PM|#

Yeah - that just can't be!!

After all, the "assault weapons" ban has expired we all know that oceans of blood are running in the streets as a direct result.

It's all an NRA conspiracy to cover up the truth! They bought off every FBI agent involved in that report.


I demand special government task force headed by Van Jones be set up to investigate!

He is, after all, an expert on oonspiracies.

Joe M|9.14.09 @ 1:21PM|#

I know what is it. The police are arresting so many people for drug possession they never have the chance to graduate to violent crime.

Abdul|9.14.09 @ 1:23PM|#

I think it's because the Tea Party rallies give all the violent kooks some other way to occupy their time.

|9.14.09 @ 1:26PM|#

So, GTA IV, CCW in national parks and the dramatic increase in gun purchases and CCW permits didn't drive crime rates up?

|9.14.09 @ 1:29PM|#

Porn Up, Rape Down

|9.14.09 @ 1:29PM|#

No Child Left Behind has really started showing some benefit! Wow!

|9.14.09 @ 1:29PM|#

Yet, Obama remains committed to a new Assault Weapons Ban:

"Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets."

It's still up there on change.gov . If he had changed his mind, wouldn't he have taken it down by now?

|9.14.09 @ 1:37PM|#

P.S.- I was so quick to get the "belongs on foreign battlefields" comment up, I missed talking about the Tiahrt Amendment (keeping your gun purchases private), making guns "childproof" (ask a gun owner from California how well that's working out), and the "gunshow loophole" (like that's going to stop the private sell of legal arms through classified ads, Internet forums, ect.).

This administration's gun policy is a joke. It's not that Bush was much better (See: Banning the importation of parts kits).

Howarad Johnson|9.14.09 @ 2:03PM|#

Prisons work. Build more.

Howarad Johnson|9.14.09 @ 2:04PM|#

He is, after all, an expert on oonspiracies

Did you mean coonspiracies?

Howarad Johnson|9.14.09 @ 2:05PM|#

conspiracies

Arrrrgh!

Neu Mejican|9.14.09 @ 2:05PM|#

Ahhh... an fact that can be used to support any policy.

Fun.

NM Copyeditor|9.14.09 @ 2:06PM|#

"an fact"? WTF?

|9.14.09 @ 2:06PM|#

No Child Left Behind has really started showing some benefit! Wow!

Don't be such a shill. Clearly, this is a direct result of Cash 4 Clunkers.

|9.14.09 @ 2:16PM|#

Did you mean coonspiracies?

Ouch! Racist RC'z Law of the week, right there.

!|9.14.09 @ 2:16PM|#

Obama has saved us again.

|9.14.09 @ 2:17PM|#

Ahhh... an fact that can be used to support any policy.

I'm wondering how it can be used to support Obama's policy of mo' gun control.

|9.14.09 @ 2:17PM|#

This is a result of increased incarceration and increases in people protecting themselves with guns and technology. In short, it has become much harder to commit and get away with a violent crime and the downside has gone up.

I'm against incarcerating a lot of nonviolent offenders, but you can't escape the fact that a lot of them are really violent people who just happen to get convicted of a nonviolent crime, regardless, they are still off the street. Right or wrong the effect is lower crime.

|9.14.09 @ 2:22PM|#

I'm wondering how it can be used to support Obama's policy of mo' gun control.

You don't want the killings to back up, do you?

|9.14.09 @ 2:38PM|#

Roe v. Wade - 1973
Violent crime rates start falling ~ 16 ywears later.
Violent crime is a young mans game.

Correlation does not equal causation, yadda, yadda, yadda, but the timeline is interesting to say the least.

|9.14.09 @ 3:01PM|#

Does this mean we've finally sacrificed enough freedom for safety? Please?

Tony|9.14.09 @ 3:18PM|#

J sub D,

That is something others have noticed too.

Warty|9.14.09 @ 3:26PM|#

And we oppose THE VERY LAWS that are responsible for this. What kind of monsters are we?

@ (racist)|9.14.09 @ 3:51PM|#

I like to watch the lurid real-life prison shows on the cable TV, and I've determined that there is a causal relationship between violent prisoners and tattoos. So I recommend that we lock up all the tattooed freaks. And the brown and black people.

Neu Mejican|9.14.09 @ 4:21PM|#

RC Dean,

I'm wondering how it can be used to support Obama's policy of mo' gun control.

The method: pick your preferred position on gun control and claim it as the cause. Use this as justification for your policy proposal. Actually works for any "crime reduction" policy you may want to promote as long as it is a variation on something already being done, or some trend in the society.

Your fellow posters have already given you some nice examples of how to do that.

|9.14.09 @ 4:43PM|#

J sub D: I half suspect that the reason incarceration rates are so high is the flip side to the abortion rationale. If you take as granted the premise that a criminal father is more likely to produce the next generation of criminals, whether because of nature or nurture, throwing the book at criminals makes more sense. They don't get to reproduce, the non-criminal guys take their place, and eventually you selectively breed your way to low low crime rates. It's not so much about punishment or keeping the streets safe as it is about limiting reproductive opportunities. If you view the criminal justice system as a disguised eugenics program, it makes a lot of sense.

Wouldn't be the first time the justice system was hijacked for population control; cf. England shipping ever misdemeanor they could to Australia or the colonies.

|9.14.09 @ 4:56PM|#

Ahhh... an fact that can be used to support any policy.

Not really a commenter at http://www.env-econ.net today tried to justify the new tariffs on Chinese tires because: "Our unemployment rate in many cities before this current recession was above 20% now its at 50% or more, that is one reason for the high crime rate."

Fun.

|9.14.09 @ 5:03PM|#

Roe v. Wade - 1973
Violent crime rates start falling ~ 16 ywears later.
Violent crime is a young mans game.

Correlation does not equal causation, yadda, yadda, yadda, but the timeline is interesting to say the least.

The freakonimics model is full of shit...if they want to actually correlate anything it would be to the availability of the Pill.

Roe Vs Wade was not a sea change...many states had legalized abortion before 1973 yet the crime statistics do not follow this.

|9.14.09 @ 5:15PM|#

Toxic

That is not exactly an accurate characterization of Britain's transportation policy.

Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore is a useful read on the topic.

|9.14.09 @ 5:48PM|#

Isaac, I think it is fairly accurate to say that transportation was a means of population control, of shipping the less desirable elements to populate the colonies. And that the goal of transportation was very loosely connected to ideas like justice, guilt, or innocence. And I got that idea, however misguided, from The Fatal Shore.

|9.14.09 @ 5:59PM|#

The method: pick your preferred position on gun control and claim it as the cause.

The only significant changes in gun control laws over the past several years have been the spread of shall-issue CCW laws and the repeal of the assault weapons ban. I don't see how less gun control + lower crime can be used to argue for mo' gun control.

I'm against incarcerating a lot of nonviolent offenders, but you can't escape the fact that a lot of them are really violent people who just happen to get convicted of a nonviolent crime,

[citation needed]

Neu Mejican|9.14.09 @ 7:01PM|#

RC Dean,

You say something like.

It took us this long, but those gun control laws are finally taking their toll. We need to do more of that to see additional benefits in the future.

It's just as easy as to do as to claim that the change in concealed carry had anything to do with it. Both positions are equally unsupported by the statistic.

|9.14.09 @ 7:04PM|#

And that the goal of transportation was very loosely connected to ideas like justice, guilt, or innocence. And I got that idea, however misguided, from The Fatal Shore.

I thought it was a property rights issue...these poeple essentially owned money to the government either because of their crimes or because of their debts. These poeple had not money or property to give over to the government so in order to clear those debts they became indentured servants. The colonies were not a solution to crime or a population control scheme...they were simply places where cheap labor was needed and indentured labor was cheap.

shecky|9.14.09 @ 11:35PM|#

Crime is down? All those illegal immigrants must not know what to do with all those guns.