Will Crime Rates Continue To Fall?
“According to figures released today by the FBI, the estimated number of violent crimes in the Nation declined for the second year in a row. Property crimes also declined in 2008, marking the sixth straight year the collective estimates for these offenses dropped below the previous year’s total.”
-From September 14, 2009, press release for issuance of DOJ’s Crime in the United States, 2008
From the Associated Press’ Don Babwin yesterday:
Ever since he was laid off in March, Frank Beil has been on the lookout.
He keeps an eye out for cars moving slowly down the street or strangers walking along the sidewalk of his suburban Chicago neighborhood. He wonders about the times he answers the phone and the caller hangs up.
“You don’t know if that might be people staking you out, finding out if you’re home or not,” said the 71-year-old hospital chaplain from Glenview.
Beil is watching for burglars, and police nationwide credit him and those like him for one of the few bright spots of the recession: The number of home burglaries is falling in some cities and towns.
“With a lot more unemployed people, a lot more people are staying home, and they see more in their neighborhood,” said Sgt. Thomas Lasater, who supervises the burglary unit of the police department in St. Louis County, Mo., where authorities recorded a whopping 35 percent drop in burglaries during the first six months of 2009.
The trend is showing up in communities big and small.
In Minneapolis, the number of burglaries reported in roughly the first nine months of the year dropped more than 15 percent compared with the same period last year, and more than 25 percent compared with that period in 2007. In Boston, the 2,199 burglaries reported in roughly the first nine months of the year is 335 fewer than in the same period last year.
Aurora, a city of 170,000 outside Chicago, had 560 burglaries through the end of September, a 15.5 percent decrease from the same period last year. And in Shelby, N.C., a town of 21,000, the number of burglaries through August was 23, compared with 60 for the same time last year.
In many cities, other crimes including homicide, robbery and rape have been dropping for several years, according to FBI statistics. But burglary stands out because it was actually rising between 2007 and 2008, and experts expected that trend to continue as the recession dragged on and unemployment rose.
Unfortunately, the falling crime rate in many areas of the country coincides with an economic recession. This has taken a toll on government finances— and police department staffing levels. Take a look at some of the recent headlines:
“Grand Rapids layoffs to include 44 police officers, 25 firefighters, dozens more”
-Grand Rapids Press (MI), November 10
“21 Tulsa Cops Could Face Layoffs”
-KRMG.com, Tulsa (OK), October 27
“East Providence police layoffs take effect Friday”
-Providence Journal (RI), October 8
“East Cleveland mayor announces 19 police layoffs”
-The Plain Dealer (OH), October 7
Furthermore, an increasing number of states are releasing criminals from prison early in an attempt to deal with budget crises. I wrote back on October 30 that the state where I live, Illinois, is in the final states of granting early release to 1,000 convicted felons a year. And TIME’s John Cloud wrote on September 19:
Owing to budget crises, many states are now having trouble affording to keep so many people locked up. Some states are cutting incarceration expenses by consolidating prisons; some are trying to slash prison-food and health-care costs. But real savings come only when you reduce prison populations, and so some states — including California, Colorado and Kentucky — have begun releasing inmates early. “The pressure in state legislatures all over the country is to bring down the populations, because we just can’t afford the level of punishment that we’ve had the last 20 years,” says Joan Petersilia, a criminologist at Stanford Law School.
Criminologists say little research has been conducted to determine whether early-release initiatives lead to higher crime rates, although some prisoners who get out will undoubtedly commit crimes that they wouldn’t have been able to commit if they were still behind bars.
And possibly bump up the crime rate.
Stay tuned, folks.
Sources:
“Recession’s good news: Cities see burglaries fall”
Don Babwin
Associated Press, November 9, 2009
“Do Early-Release Programs Raise the Crime Rate?”
John Cloud
TIME, September 14, 2009
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