Interesting Article . . .
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2010/05/24/1446000/fbi-says-violent-crime-rate-down.html
Crime in the United States dropped dramatically in 2009, bucking a historical trend that links rising crime rates to economic woes. Property crimes and violent offenses each declined about 5 percent, the FBI said Monday, citing reports from law enforcement coast to coast. It was the third straight year of declines, and this year’s drops were even steeper than those of 2007 and 2008, despite the recession.
The FBI collected the crime data from more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies around the country. According to the numbers, all four measured categories of violent crime declined compared with 2008 – robbery, murder, aggravated assault and forcible rape.
* Violent crime declined 4 percent in metropolitan counties and 3 percent elsewhere, the FBI reported.
* Nationwide, the murder rate was down 7.2 percent last year.
* The largest decrease in murders – 7.5 percent – took place in cities of half a million to a million in population. The only increase – 5.3 percent – occurred in cities with 25,000 to 50,000 people.
* Robbery dropped 8.1 percent, aggravated assault declined 4.2 percent and forcible rape was down 3.1 percent.
* Violent crime fell 6.6 percent in the South, 5.6 percent in the West, 4.6 percent in the Midwest and 3.5 percent in the Northeast.
My opinion? That’s good news. It debunks any theories that economic recessions leads to increased crime rates. I, for one, haven’t seen a dramatic increase in crime – except for maybe low-level street drugs like heroin – since the recession hit. Still despite the succesful efforts of law enforcement’s endeavors, we should not be too quick to pat ourselves on the back. In the article, Northeastern University criminology professor James Alan Fox said, “We have increasing numbers of at-risk youth in the population, and they need services. We need to reinvest in crime prevention or else the good news we see today could evaporate.” (emphasis supplied).
True. These sentiments were also mentioned by Whatcom County Superior Court Judge Snyder in a feature article I wrote for the Whatcom County Bar Association newsletter. In Burning the Candlestick at Both Ends: Threadbare Judicial resources & Increased Court Litigation Gives Us Opportunity to Influence Change, I interviewed Judge Snyder. He believes that although the decreased criminal filings trend is a result of the work done in Juvenile Court within the last few years, this positive trend could reverse.
“The Juvenile Justice Center and Probation have made a significant difference in the number of kids brought in on juvenile charges,” said Judge Snyder. “The reality is, my sense of it, they’re doing really intensive work with the kids and having a lot of success with them while tehy’re still juveniles. And I think its been going on long enough now that we’ve started seeing the impacts. Fewer juveniles are graduating to become adult criminals. they’re charged fewer times and less often. And the risk we run is that this budget cycle has made it very difficult to maintain those services. Juvenile court has taken a substantial hit. If that happens, those gains may be lost very quickly, and we’ll be back with increased filings in a short period of time.”
The bottom line is this: although we have decreased crime rates, this positive trend will cease if we discontinue investing in juvenile courts. Period.
