Violent crime in the United States

[seamusTX]

This is a periodic review of violent crime rates in the United States.

Overall violent crime rates have declined in every category, with occasional upticks in one or more categories, since the early 1990s. These declines continue regardless of changes in policy. Highly publicized measures like "three strikes and you're out" affect few criminals.

The main factor controlling the rate of violent crime is the number of young males in the population, as they perpetrate the majority of violent crimes. The state of the economy has a secondary effect, mostly increasing the number of robberies, burglaries, and thefts.

Here is a summary from the 2008 Uniform Crime Report, produced by the FBI:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_01a.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The shaded columns are percent changes in the violent crime rate per 100,000 population. The unshaded columns are percent changes in the total number of reported crimes. In some periods, the number of crimes may increase, but the rate decreases because the population is always increasing.

That said, some localities my have upticks in criminal activity for a variety of reasons. Many big cities currently have a lot of gang violence, for reasons that I have not been able to figure out.

This information rarely seems to be newsworthy. TV producers want to turn every local gang turf war or multiple murder by a lunatic into a crime wave.

- Jim

[dicion]

What I take from these charts is the following:



- You have about a 1/200 chance of being a victim of violent crime in general any given year.
- You have about a 1/130 chance of your home being Burglarized in any given year.
- You have about a 1/300 chance of having your car stolen in any given year.
- You have about a 1/350 chance of being a victim of Aggravated Assault in any given year.

Now what gets me, is all these people who play the lottery for the 1/10,000,000 shot, but refuse to do anything to protect themselves from the above, much more likely, situations from happening.

The sheep don't need the wool pulled over their eyes, it grows over it naturally already.

Granted, these charts aren't detailling completely random happenstance, and alot of this varies by region. There's a lot of things you can do to reduce Your individual chances of the above.
But if you pulled John Q. Public from random from anywhere in this country with no regard to anything else, these are the chances.

[seamusTX]

Those are the overall probabilities. However, if you look at victims, they are typically

• young, mostly young males who are involved in some kind of shady activity
• poor or live in slums
• women (victims of rape and domestic violence)
• workers in risky occupations like retail clerks or delivery drivers
• elderly

Ironically, the type of person most likely to have a CHL and carry is a mature, middle-class white male. They are least often the victims of violent crime.

(I know there are CHL holders of every description on this forum, but the total membership here is a tiny fraction of the millions of people nationwide who have some kind of concealed-carry license.)

Your chances of being a burglary victim are probably higher than the raw numbers indicate, because most residential burglaries produce multiple victims (everyone who lives in the home).

- Jim

[seamusTX]

Today the FBI announced preliminary crime statistics for 2009.

All nationwide rates of violent crime decreased.

Here are some highlights:

Murder declined by 7.2% in 2009, its steepest drop in a decade as violent crime across the United States continued falling for the third straight year, ...

Overall violent crime was down 5.5%, led by an 8.1% fall in robbery, while non-violent property offenses showed across-the-board drops, led by a 17.2% decline in auto theft.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... a-decade/1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/may10/crime_052410.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Most observers (including me) are surprised that crime rates continued to decline in spite of a stagnant economy and high unemployment.

Only a few cities (including Chicago) had increases in homicide.

- Jim