NCJ Number
173550
Date Published
1996
Length
11 pages
Annotation
This paper provides the most current data on crime rates as measured by Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) for 1995, and factors that influence crime rates are discussed.
Abstract
Both the UCR, which measures crimes known to the police, and the NCVS, which measures crimes experienced by citizens but not necessarily reported to the police, show declines or stabilization in the crime rates since 1980. The UCR shows a steady decline in the violent crime rate since 1991; the recent decline in murders is limited to a small number of major cities. There are many social, economic, and public policy factors that contribute to the crime rate. As cited by experts, these factors include criminal justice policies, demographics (particularly gender and age patterns), and other social and economic factors. The authors note that although the "correctional industrial complex" has grown rapidly over the last decades, crime rates remain substantially higher than in the 1960s and the 1970s despite a substantial increase in incarceration rates and in the number of persons under all forms of correctional supervision. A study of factors that impact crime rates in the various States (Linsky and Straus, 1986) found no association between the rate of incarceration and crime rates. Crime rate differences among the States were related to such factors as business failures, illegitimate births, unemployment, infant deaths, workers on strike, fetal deaths, personal bankruptcies, State residency of less than 5 years, divorces, abortions, new welfare cases, and high school dropout rates. The number of males in the population between the ages of 15 and 29 is also a factor in crime rates; crime rates tend to correlate with the size of this age group. This male "at-risk" population is expected to increase over the next decade, leading some to predict that the Nation must brace itself for a new wave of juvenile violent crime that may negate recent declines in violent crime rates. 7 tables and 6 figures