WASHINGTON -- Violent
crime fell almost 15 percent across the country last year, the largest
one-year plunge since the government began keeping such figures, suggesting
that the remarkable decline in crime that began eight years ago has not
bottomed out.
Criminologists had no immediate
explanation for why violent crime should drop so dramatically in one year,
with Americans suffering about 1 million fewer crimes in 2000 than in 1999.
But the figures punctuate a trend that has been attributed to everything
from the booming economy to the end of the crack cocaine wars.
"The victims of violent crime
are predominantly in minority neighborhoods, so the factors that affect
minority neighborhoods are the factors that affect the violent crime rate,"
said Jerome Skolnick, a professor at New York University Law School.
"As of last year, the economy
was in very good shape with very low unemployment," Skolnick added. "The
decline in crack use was responsible for the decline in violence in a lot
of cities."
What made the Justice
Department's report striking, however, was that it contradicted FBI figures
from just two weeks ago indicating that decline in crime had stopped. Those
FBI numbers showed crime virtually unchanged from 1999 to 2000 and prompted
some experts to declare the long crime drop officially over.
The dramatically different
conclusions stem in part from the different approaches of the two yearly
reports. The FBI assembles crime numbers from police departments, while
the Justice Department study released Wednesday is a "victimization survey,"
in which individuals are contacted and asked if they have been the victim
of a crime.
Some criminologists consider
the survey a more accurate measure, because some people do not report crimes
to the police but are happy to tell a surveyor they have been targeted.
"These are very different
techniques of measurement," said Norval Morris, professor emeritus of law
and criminology at the University of Chicago. "It's not that one gets it
right and the other gets it wrong; they provide different insights. But
by and large, scholars think the surveys are more reliable."
The victims' survey includes
crimes, like assault without a weapon, that are not considered serious
enough to be included in the FBI figures. And it omits homicide, because
murder victims obviously are unable to speak to surveyors.
Because the survey is skewed
toward less serious crimes, Northeastern University criminal justice professor
James Alan Fox offered a caution about Wednesday's report. "If you look
at the most serious offenses, the drop is much less steep," Fox said. "This
is good news, but it's not great news."
Still, the two reports almost
always mirror each other. Their sharp divergence makes this a very unusual
year, and it left experts struggling Wednesday to explain exactly what
is going on with the nation's crime rate.
What is clear is that violent
crime has been dropping steadily since 1993 -- by some estimates it has
fallen 40 percent in that time -- and that the trend cannot continue forever.
With the economy slowing,
many expect the crime rate to begin rising again within a couple of years.
"Those declines cannot continue indefinitely," said Alfred Blumstein, a
criminologist at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. "It has to flatten
out at some point."
Through the early 1990s,
crime was rising, fueled by a halting economy and by wars between crack
gangs that were ravaging urban areas. That spurred a tough-on-crime fervor
and a host of harsh anti-crime measures, including long sentences, prison
construction, and zero-tolerance policies that encouraged arrests for even
the smallest of crimes.
But since 1993, crime has
dropped by a few percentage points each year, creating an unprecedented
era of declining violence and prompting partisans on both sides of the
political divide to claim credit.
Democrats have depicted the
falling crime rates as one of the proud legacies of the era of President
Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno. The bustling economy is an
underlying reason for lower crime, they say, as is Clinton's initiative
to put 100,000 community-oriented police officers on the street.
Conservatives, in contrast,
have cited the tough penalties enacted in the mid-1990s, such as mandatory
sentences and "three strikes you're out" laws. They also credit such policies
as New York's "broken windows" program, under which police went after minor
crimes to create a sense of order and control.
Still others have cited improvements
in security technology, from surveillance cameras to car stereos that do
not work once removed from a specific automobile.
Wednesday's numbers did little
to quench that debate or to halt the attempts to score political points.
Attorney General John Ashcroft applauded the new figures but also took
the opportunity to press for more tough action.
"While this is good news,
there are still far too many people in our nation who are victims of crime,"
Ashcroft said. "To ensure that our communities become even safer, we must
continue to work at preventing crime and holding accountable those who
violate our laws."
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del.,
former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the numbers are
proof that Clinton's community policing program worked and that President
Bush should rethink his plans to cut it. Bush's proposed 2002 budget includes
no money to continue hiring officers under that program.
"Wednesday's report, which
surveyed 160,000 individuals aged 12 or older, showed that violent crimes
decreased from 7.4 million to 6.3 million. That was led by a drop in rape
and sexual assault, which fell by 30 percent, and simple assault, which
dropped by 14 percent. Nonviolent property crimes such as car theft also
dropped by 10 percent.