Crime in the United States

Do not take the lead paragraphs very seriously; at least, not until you have looked at the first section: Interpretation of Statistics
Crime statistics for the United States are published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Uniform Crime Reports which represents crimes reported to the police. The Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts the annual National Crime Victimization Survey which captures crimes not reported to the police.

The country's overall crime rate is displayed in fifty indices. The violent crime index comprises homicide, forcible rape, robbery and assault. The property crime index consists of burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. Statistics for index offenses are generally available for the country as a whole, all fifty states and all participating communities within the United States. For example, Dallas is mentioned as having one of the highest crime rates in the nation. This indicator is important in demonstrating this statistic and understanding the intricacies of crime in Dallas. As noted above, “the crime rate” as reported in the news media typically refers to a combination of violent crime and property crime. In 2002, Dallas reportedly had 17,018 crimes, and 15,429 in 2005. However, in Dallas, as in many other cities, property crime accounts for the majority of offences, while “the crime rate" is frequently interpreted as the rate of violent crime.

The crime rate is measured by the number of offenses being reported per 100,000 people. While the crime rate had risen sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s, bringing it to a constant all-time high during much of the 1980s, it has declined steeply since 1993. One hypothesis suggests a causal link between legalized abortion and the drop in crime during the 1990s. Another possibility sometimes suggested is the introduction of the Three Strikes Law, which was first passed by Washington state in 1993, providing that felony offenders who committed a third offence receive life imprisonment. Other states that passed Three Strikes Laws include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Arkansas, Georgia, and Maryland. Research has not borne out this speculation however. In a 2005 policy brief, An examination of the impact of 3-Strike laws 10 years after their enactment, Justice Policy Institute reported that analysis of ten years of FBI Uniform Crime Report data found that Three Strikes states fared no better than states that did not adopt strikes laws. The largest non-strike state, New York, experienced a 53.9% decrease in violent crime from 1993-2002. The largest strike state, California, experienced a 44.9% decrease in violent crime during the same years. Strike states had slightly better declines in serious crime rates (26.8% vs. 22.3%) driven by slightly greater declines in property crime (25.9% vs. 20.4%). Non-strike states had marginally better declines in violent crime (34.3% vs. 33.0%) and greater declines in homicides (43.9% vs. 38.2%).

In 2004 America's crime rate was roughly the same as in 1970, with the homicide rate being at its lowest level since 1965. Overall, the national crime rate was 3977 crimes per 100,000 residents, down from 4852 crimes per 100,000 residents thirty years earlier in 1974 (-18%).

The likelihood of committing and falling victim to crime also depends on several demographic characteristics, as well as location of the population. Overall, men, minorities, the young, and those in financially less favorable positions are more likely to be crime victims, as well as commit crimes. Crime in the US is also concentrated in certain areas.

Crime tends to be higher in American cities, and higher still in economically disadvantaged areas. For example, San Mateo County, California had a population of approximately 707,000 and 17 homicides in 2001. 6 of these 17 homicides took place in poor, largely Black and Hispanic East Palo Alto, which had a population of roughly 30,000. So, while East Palo Alto accounted for a mere 4.2% of the population, about one-third of the homicides took place there. According to the FBI, in 2008 16,272 people were murdered in America.

Ira M. Leonard has calculated that during the hundred years between 1901 and 2000, more Americans were murdered by fellow Americans than soldiers died on active duty during the sixteen years of the First World War, Second World War, Korean War and the Vietnam War combined.

Property crime rates in the United States (1986-2005). Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports Graphic

Interpretation of Statistics

"Location has a very significant impact on crime in the United States. While some responding jurisdictions are nearly free of serious crime, others are plagued by some of the highest serious crime rates in the industrialized world. The homicide rate exemplifies the stark differences between communities."

This paragraph from WP, apart from attempting to extract meaning from a truism, that areas have different crime rates, and some will be the highest and some the lowest, reflects a long-standing misuse of raw crime data to make a hierarchy of locations. Crime as a whole is too complex for the raw data to be interpreted in this way and still lead to significant conclusions. Only when the unique combination of identifiable geographic and social factors that contribute to crime are applied to analysis of crime data from several locations, can a comparison between them be complete. Extracting interpretations of a single geographic or social factor from raw crime statistics, which represent the interaction of several geographic or social factors, (as the quoted example does) is particularly misleading.

The FBI has ceased listing crime stats by location, stating that

UCR data are sometimes used to compile rankings of individual jurisdictions and institutions of higher learning. These incomplete analyses have often created misleading perceptions which adversely affect geographic entities and their residents. For this reason, the FBI has a long-standing policy against ranking participating law enforcement agencies on the basis of crime data alone. Despite repeated warnings against these practices, some data users continue to challenge and misunderstand this position.

Data users should not rank locales because there are many factors that cause the nature and type of crime to vary from place to place. UCR statistics include only jurisdictional population figures along with reported crime, clearance, or arrest data. Rankings ignore the uniqueness of each locale. Some factors that are known to affect the volume and type of crime occurring from place to place are:

• Population density and degree of urbanization.

• Variations in composition of the population, particularly youth concentration.

• Stability of the population with respect to residents’ mobility, commuting patterns, and transient factors.

• Economic conditions, including median income, poverty level, and job availability.

• Modes of transportation and highway systems.

• Cultural factors and educational, recreational, and religious characteristics.

• Family conditions with respect to divorce and family cohesiveness.

• Climate.

• Effective strength of law enforcement agencies.

• Administrative and investigative emphases on law enforcement.

• Policies of other components of the criminal justice system (i.e., prosecutorial, judicial, correctional, and probational).

• Citizens’ attitudes toward crime.

• Crime reporting practices of the citizenry.

Incarceration for victimless crime (drug offenses)

work in progress
Most of the information available is the same old story; drugs are a victimless crime that was made a crime by right-wing special interests, in the case of DuPont, for monetary gain only, and ill effects have largely, and in proportion to people's assessment of drug dangers, been blown out of proportion. Anti-drug propaganda has asserted ad nauseum with a truly miniscule amount of real laboratory evidence mostly hidden behind paywalls and only supporting truisms (eg, marijuana affects the ability to concentrate), most people believe they should be legal, but they are not only criminalized but in huge numbers, that grew to enormous proportions in the 1980s and stayed that way.

However, there are a few new wrinkles to the story. Having captured the mainstream imagination with the Drug War, government agencies are doing their best to shake the perception that the Department of Justice is really not.

Space cadets

The Office of National Drug Control Policy ONDCP is given US Federal funding to scream in giant letters:

Drug legalizers want you to believe a lie— that our prisons are filled with marijuana smokers. In fact, the vast majority of drug prisoners are violent criminals, repeat offenders, traffickers, or all of the above.

In between the um, assertions of HEINOUSNESS are some useful facts, and even valid factors to be applied to statistics

• Multiple offenses. This data can be abused two ways. Drug advocates could conceivably count someone convicted of murder and pot possession as incarcaration for drugs. And drug legislation supporters could conceivably count someone convicted of a traffic offense and pot possession as not an incarceration for drugs. Of the two, the drug advocates' position is stronger. Incarceration is incarceration, and furthermore, two charges linked together can lead judges to incarcerate where they would otherwise have not, in the same way as blacks are incarcerated where whites are not.
  • Plea bargaining. Again, the data can be interpreted two ways, but this is much more convincing. Adding a drug offense can make a person rightfully or wrongfully accused of a greater crime plea down to the drug offense.

The ONDCP conclusions from their data is incredibly flawed by statements that betray either the writer's lack of familiarity with even the most basic concepts of statistical analysis, such as conflating the Wikipedia:median with 50% of the total sample. It is easy to mistake the median of a sample for the mean of a sample, but no one who has spent ten minutes learning statistics mistakes half the sample for either; in a data sample the median is the middle number, and it has its uses, and counterindications (that widely and unevenly scattered data points are 'missed' by it), but it is not the average (known as the mean). Not only that, the median is further away from 'half the sample' than the mean, as the latter two include assessments of the total. Either the ONDCP is hiring people that have not one solitary clue about how to run a statistical analysis, or they are receiving federal funding to deceive the public.

Here is an example to show how this skews the information. In a study of how far humans can get away from the surface of the earth, the distance to the dark side of the moon is included along with the various maximum jumping heights of 100,000 individuals, because some of the Apollo astronauts went there. The median is therefore somewhere close to half the distance to the moon, and the study is in danger, like the ONDCP, of relating two things with little to do with each other (jumping and space travel, busts of drug lords with busts of someone smoking their first doob) if it uses the median. The mean distance (average), however, even with the Apollo astronauts included, would of course remain quite close to the average jumping distance, because they are vastly outnumbered. The average dope smoker may still be in danger of being mistaken for a dealer with the average, but out of the two, the mean average more justly represents the data, as any statistician would know.

Busts of thousands of tons of marijuana skew the ONDCP data. But not content with subverting the data in a manner that would bring instant condemnation and disdain of a study from scientists, they have then done the equivalent of (using our example again) stating that half of the people in the world can jump halfway to the moon, with the rest being able to jump somewhere between a foot and all the way to the moon.

Only separating users from dealers first, and then plotting the incarceration rates numbers on a graph would fully satisfy the requirements for an unbiased sample. As we have seen, the ONDCP published a conclusion that was not only five important steps away from this, but one of the five was the absolute imperative: Do not include critical errors in your analysis.

The data that they messed up so badly with their analysis:"Unpublished BJS estimates based on the 1997 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, National Archive of Criminal Justice Data"

Stats are skewed further by government programs such as the The National Crime Victimization Survey, which gives a maximum profile to reported drug use while maintaining lower numbers for drug users in prison populations, by effectively asking random people on the street to contribute their decidedly non-expert opinion to drug use statistics. "Victims of personal crimes (are asked) if they believe the offenders had been using drugs"

Crime over time

File:US Violent Crime Rate.jpg

The violent crime rate of the United States, 1960 to 2005.

Crime has been a long-standing concern in the United States, with high rates at the beginning of the 20th century compared to parts of Western Europe. In 1916, 198 homicides were recorded in Chicago, a city of slightly over 2 million at the time. This level of crime was not exceptional when compared to other American cities such as New York City, but was much higher relative to European cities, such as London, which then had three times the population but recorded only 45 homicides in the same year.

File:US Property Crime Rate.jpg

The property crime rate of the US, 1960 to 2005.

Since 1964, the U.S. crime rate has increased by as much as 350%, and over 11 million crimes were reported in the year 2007 alone. Crime in the United States has fluctuated considerably over the course of the last half-century, rising significantly in the late 1960s and 1970s, peaking in the early 1990s and then decreasing steadily from then on.

File:Ncsucr2.gif

This graph shows a sharp drop-off in violent crime since 1993. Source: United States Bureau of Justice Statistics

Over the past thirty years, the crime rate rose throughout the 1980s, reached its peak in 1993 and then began to decrease throughout the 1990s and 2000s. One hypothesis suggests there is a causal link between legalized abortion and this drop. Another suggests reduced lead exposure as the cause; Scholar Mark A.R. Kleiman writes: "Given the decrease in lead exposure among children since the 1980s and the estimated effects of lead on crime, reduced lead exposure could easily explain a very large proportion—certainly more than half—of the crime decrease of the 1994-2004 period. A careful statistical study relating local changes in lead exposure to local crime rates estimates the fraction of the crime decline due to lead reduction as greater than 90 percent.

Violent and property crimes decreased to their lowest in the past thirty years in 2005. The homicide rate in particular has decreased over 42% between its record high point in 1991 and 2005.

Recently, however, the homicide rate has stagnated. While the homicide rate decreased continuously between 1991 and 2000 from 9.8 homicides per 100,000 persons to 5.5 per 100,000, it has remained level through 2005.

Despite the recent stagnation of the homicide rate, however, property and violent crimes overall have continued to decrease, though at a considerably slower pace than in the 1990s. Overall, the crime rate in the U.S. was the same in 2004 as in 1969, with the homicide rate being roughly the same as in 1966. Violent crime overall, however, is still at the same level as in 1974, despite having decreased steadily since 1991.

Crime Rate	1960	1961	1963	1965	1967	1969	1971	1973	1975	1977	1979	1981	1983	1985	1987	1989	1991	1993	1995	1997	1999	2001	2003	2005	2007	2009
Violent crime rate	160.9	158.1	168.2	200.2	253.2	328.7	396.0	417.4	487.8	475.9	548.9	594.3	537.7	556.6	609.7	663.1	758.2	747.1	684.5	611.0	523.0	504.5	475.8	469.0	472.0	429.4
Homicide rate	5.1	4.8	4.6	5.1	6.2	7.3	8.6	9.4	9.6	8.8	9.8	9.8	8.3	8.0	8.3	8.7	9.8	9.5	8.2	6.8	5.7	5.6	5.7	5.6	5.7	5.4
Property crime rate	1,726	1,747	2,012	2,249	2,736	3,351	3,769	3,737	4,811	4,602	5,017	5,264	4,637	4,650	4,940	5,078	5,140	4,740	4,591	4,316	3,744	3,658	3,591	3,432	3,277	3,036

Crimes per 100,000 population

SOURCES: US Bureau of Justice Statistics (2004), Federal Bureau of Investigation, (2009)

Characteristics of offenders

File:Homicide offending by race.gif

As of 2005, statistics show that offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites.

As of 2008, a statistics report which surveyed all persons arrested for offending, stated that of the crimes surveyed for which the identity of the offender could be determined, 69.2 percent of all persons arrested were white or Hispanic, 28.3 percent of people arrested for offending were black or black and Hispanic; and the remaining 2.4 percent were of other races. After arrest, 45.1% of violent crimes and 17.4% of property crimes nationwide were cleared by arrest or exceptional means. As of 2008, statistics report as that of 16,277 murders, 10,568 were committed by males, 1,176 were by female, and 4,533 were committed in which the offenders sex was unknown. Likewise, 5,334 murders where committed by white offenders, 5,943 were committed by black or black and Hispanic offenders, 273 were committed by offenders of other races, and 4,727 murders were committed by offenders whom race is not known.

As of 2001, the chances of going to prison in percentages for various demographic groups

Whites constituted 82.2% of the American population in 1999 (US Bureau of the Census, 2000), with arrest rates for murder (48.9%), rape (63.1%), robbery (46.0%), aggravated assault (64.4%), burglary (68.1%), larceny/theft (64.9%), motor vehicle theft (58.0%), and arson (72.4%). It should be noted that the "white" category in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) includes non-black Hispanics. A 2008 FBI Uniform Crime Report on rape and sexual-based crime published by the United States Department of Justice stated that of the crimes surveyed, whites represented 65.2% of persons arrested for rape, blacks represented 32.2%, with American Indians and Asians ranking just above 1%. "Hispanics", "Hispanic-White" or "Hispanic-Black" was not specified into any specific category.

According to the latest "Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police," a 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics Report, hate crime offenders were predominantly white (61%), whereas the victims were predominantly black (72.9%) and targeted because of their race (51%). Among religious hate crimes, the majority of victims were of Jewish faith (65.7%) with less than one in ten offenses aimed at people of the Muslim faith (7.7%). Among crimes aimed at ethnicity and national background, the majority of hate crimes were of anti-Hispanic bias (64%).

Reporting at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (August 3, 2008), sociologists at Bowling Green State University found that men who attend college are more likely to commit property crimes during their college years than their non-college-attending peers. The research draws from three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and examines education, crime levels, substance abuse and socializing among adolescents and young adults. Also, according to Naci Mocan of the University of Colorado and Erdal Tekin of Georgia State University, "We find that unattractive individuals commit more crime in comparison to average-looking ones, and very attractive individuals commit less crime in comparison to those who are average-looking."

Prison statistics

Compared with other countries, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole, of which 2.2 million were incarcerated. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million. The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population.Template:Update after

In terms of federal prison, 57% of those incarcerated were sentenced for drug offenses. However, the federal prison population is a very small percentage of the massive state prison population, which also holds numerous people convicted of drug offenses. Currently, considering local jails as well, almost a million of those incarcerated are in prison for non-violent crime. In 2002, roughly 93.2 % of prisoners were male. About 10.4 % of all black males in the United States between the ages of 25 and 29 were sentenced and in prison by year end, compared to 2.4 % of Hispanic males and 1.2 % of white males.

Many sociologists and Criminal Justice Academics argue that this disparity in prison population is reflective of discriminatory sentencing. In a study conducted by the Rand Corporation, it has been estimated that Blacks and Latinos received longer sentences and spent more time in jail than their white counterparts who were convicted of similar crimes and with similar criminal records. One particular example revealed the state of California statistically imposed sentences that averaged 6.5 months longer for Hispanics, and 1.5 months longer for Blacks when compared to white inmates.

Aizenman, N.C.. "New High in Prison Numbers". The Washington Post February 29, 2008: 1-1.According to the Washington Post, More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year and the federal government $5 billion more. With more than 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates, leaving China a remote second, according to a study by the Pew Center on the States. For example, Florida, which has almost doubled its prison population over the past 15 years, has experienced a smaller drop in crime than New York, which, after a brief increase, has reduced its number of inmates to below the 1993 level.

Crime victimology

File:Vrace.gif

This graph shows the homicide victimization rate for whites and blacks, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Violent crime rates by gender 1973-2003

Patterns are found within the victimology of crime in the United States. Overall, the financially disadvantaged, males, those younger than 25 and non Whites were more likely to fall victim to crime. Income, sex and age had the most dramatic effect on the chances of a person being victimized by crime, while the characteristic of race depended upon the crime being committed.Template:Citation needed

In 2005, 2.7% of African Americans became the victim of a violent crime, compared to 2.0% of Whites. African Americans were overall 35% more likely to sustain a violent crime. The likelihood of being murdered was drastically higher for African Americans. In 2004 African Americans constituted roughly 13.4% of the general population, yet, nearly half, 49%, of all murder victims in 2005 were African American.

Sexual assault and rape rates were roughly the same for all races. Whites and African Americans also had approximately the same chances of falling victim to simple assaults.

In terms of gender, males were more likely to become crime victims than were females, with 79% percent of all murder victims being male. Males were also twice as likely to be carjacked as were females.

In terms of income, households with a 2008 annual income of less than $15,000 were significantly more likely to have their homes burgled.

Concerning age, those younger than twenty-five were more likely to fall victim to crime, especially violent crime. The chances of being victimized by violent crime decreased far more substantially with age than the chances of becoming the victim of property crime. For example, 3.03% of crimes committed against a young person were theft, while 20% of crimes committed against an elderly person were theft. Thus, one can conclude that the probability of becoming a violent crime victim decreases as income and age increase, in addition to being lower for European Americans and females.

Crimes against the homeless

A 2007 study found that the number of violent crimes against the homeless is increasing. The rate of such documented crimes in 2005 was 30% higher than of those in 1999. 75% of all perpetrators are under the age of 25. Studies and surveys indicate that homeless people have a much higher criminal victimization rate than the non-homeless, but that most incidents never get reported to authorities.

In recent years, largely due to the efforts of the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) and academic researchers the problem of violence against the homeless has gained national attention. The NCH called deliberate attacks against the homeless hate crimes in their report Hate, Violence, and Death on Mainstreet USA (they retain the definition of the American Congress).

The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino in conjunction with the NCH found that 155 homeless people were killed by non-homeless people in "hate killings", while 76 people were killed in all the other traditional hate crime homicide categories such as race and religion, combined. The CSHE contends that negative and degrading portrayals of the homeless contribute to a climate where violence takes place.

International comparison

The manner in which America's crime rate compared to other countries of similar wealth and development depends on the nature of the crime used in the comparison. Overall crime statistic comparisons are difficult to conduct, as the definition of crimes significant enough to be published in annual reports varies across countries. Thus an agency in a foreign country may include crimes in its annual reports which the United States omits.

Some countries such as Canada, however, have similar definitions of what constitutes a violent crime, and nearly all countries had the same definition of the characteristics that constitutes a homicide. Overall the total crime rate of the United States is similar to that of other highly developed countries. Some types of reported property crime in the U.S. survey as lower than in Germany or Canada, yet the homicide rate in the United States is substantially higher.

Homicide

The US homicide rate, which has declined substantially since 1991, is still among the highest in the industrialized world. There were 17,034 murders in the United States in 2006 (666,160 murders from 1960 to 1996). In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany (0.9). A closer look at The National Archive of Criminal Justice Data indicates that per-capita homicide rates over the last 30 years on average of major cities, New Orleans' average per capita homicide rate of 52 murders per 100,000 people overall (1980–2009) ranks highest among major U.S. cities Most industrialized countries had homicide rates below the 2.5 mark. Homicide rate comparisons. URL accessed on 2006-09-29.</ref>

Country	Ireland	Germany	Netherlands	Norway	United Kingdom	France	Canada	Scotland	United States	Russia	Venezuela	Jamaica	Colombia
Homicide rate (per hundred thousand)	0.9	0.9	1.0	1.2	1.4	1.6	1.9	1.59	5.4	20.15	49.2	32.41	33.9
Year	2000	2007	2007	2000	2000	2004	2004	2001	2008	2000	2000	2009	2009

In the United States, the number of homicides where the victim and offender relationship was undetermined has been increasing since 1999 but has not reached the levels experienced in the early 1990s. In 14% of all murders, the victim and the offender were strangers. Spouses and family members made up about 15% of all victims, about one-third of the victims were acquaintances of the assailant, and the victim and offender relationship was undetermined in over one-third of homicides. Gun involvement in homicides were gang related homicides which increased after 1980, homicides that occurred during the commission of a felony which increased from 55% in 1985 to 77% in 2005, homicides resulting from arguments which declined to the lowest levels recorded recently, and homicides resulting from other circumstances which remained relatively constant. Because gang killing has become a normal part of inner cities, many including police, hold preconceptions about the causes of death in inner cities. When a death is labeled gang related it lowers the chances that it will be investigated and increases the chances that the perpetrator will remain at large. In addition, victims of gang killings often determine the priority a case will be given by police. Jenkins (1988) argues that many serial murder cases remain unknown to police and that cases involving Black offenders and victims are especially likely to escape official attention.

Violent crime

The burglary rates of selected developed countries as published by the US Bureau of Justice Statistics

The reported US violent crime rate includes only Aggravated Assault, whereas the Canadian violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including the much-more-numerous Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm). A government study concluded that direct comparison of the 2 countries' violent crime totals or rates was "inappropriate".

Property crime

According to a 2004 study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, looking at the period from 1981 to 1999, the United States had a lower surveyed residential burglary rate in 1998 than Scotland, England, Canada, the Netherlands, and Australia. The other two countries included in the study, Sweden and Switzerland, had only slightly lower burglary rates. (Note: The rate of burglary in Police records remained higher in the U.S. than most other countries during the study period (see graph)). For the first nine years of the study period the same surveys of the public showed only Australia with rates higher than the U.S. The authors noted various problems in doing the comparisons including infrequent data points (The U.S. performed 5 surveys from 1995 to 1999 when its rate dipped below Canada's while Canada ran a single telephone survey during that period for comparison).

Geography of crime

File:Homicide Rate 04.jpg

Thanks in part to what it considers abuse of data in graphs such as this, the FBI no longer lists crime by location

For example, in 2004 the Baltimore police departments reported more homicides per 100,000 residents than any other jurisdiction. The rate of homicide per 100,000 was 43.5, nearly eight times the national average. By contrast, in 2005 Forbes magazine listed Long Island, one of the suburban areas of New York City, which is also one of the wealthiest and most expensive communities in the United States, as having 2.042 crimes per 100,000 residents; the lowest crime rate and less than half the US average [4].

Fairfax County, Virginia, a very affluent suburban enclave of the nation's capital with 1,041,200 residents, had the lowest homicide rate of any jurisdiction. In 2004, Fairfax County's homicide rate was reported at 0.3 homicides per 100,000 persons, 94.5% below the national average and 1/145 of Baltimore's homicide rate. It is therefore important to remember that the risk of being victimized by crime in the United States varies greatly from locale to locale.

Cities with high proportion of blacks and Hispanics are usually affected by violent crime. The single best indicator of an area’s violent crime rate is its racial/ethnic mix.

Large cities

Crime among the country's twenty largest cities tended to be above the national average. It is, however, important to note that these statistics exclude the given city's suburbs and only reflect the crime rates within the jurisdiction of a given city's police department.

Rates are based on cases per 100,000 for all of calendar 2007.

City	State	Population	Violent crime	Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter	Forcible rape	Robbery	Aggravated assault	Property crime	Burglary	Larceny-theft	Motor vehicle theft	Arson
Foo	Foo	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Austin	Wikipedia:Texas	716,817	540	4	46	203	287	6,341	1,120	4,808	413	16
Wikipedia:Baltimore	Wikipedia:Maryland	624,237	1,631	45	23	624	939	4,796	1,182	2,682	932	65
Chicago	Wikipedia:Illinois	2,824,434	N/A	16	N/A	546	617	4,472	876	2,937	659	25
Columbus	Wikipedia:Ohio	735,981	852	11	90	523	228	6,996	1,952	4,198	846	87
Dallas	Wikipedia:Texas	1,239,104	1,069	16	41	583	429	6,776	1,814	3,849	1,113	73
Detroit	Wikipedia:Michigan	860,971	2,289	46	40	764	1,440	6,772	2,064	2,430	2,278	88
El Paso	Wikipedia:Texas	616,029	418	3	42	77	297	3,201	349	2,361	492	13
Fort Worth	Texas	670,693	667	9	50	242	367	5,469	1,343	3,726	400	34
Wikipedia:Houston	Texas	2,169,544	1,132	16	32	529	555	5,684	1,339	3,449	897	48
Indianapolis	Wikipedia:Indiana	797,268	1,234	14	63	507	649	6,308	1,679	3,666	963	42
Jacksonville	Wikipedia:Florida	797,350	1,022	15	31	391	584	5,696	1,394	3,698	604	23
Wikipedia:Los Angeles	Wikipedia:California	3,870,487	718	10	26	348	334	2,621	507	1,506	608	57
Memphis	Wikipedia:Tennessee	669,264	1,951	19	68	728	1,136	8,062	2,183	4,953	926	22
New York	Wikipedia:New York	8,220,196	614	6	11	265	332	1,819	254	1,403	161	N/A
Wikipedia:Philadelphia	Wikipedia:Pennsylvania	1,435,533	1,475	27	67	715	667	4,305	803	2,728	774	N/A
Phoenix	Wikipedia:Arizona	1,541,698	724	14	33	321	356	5,826	1,246	3,227	1,353	32
San Antonio	Wikipedia:Texas	1,316,882	556	9	48	186	313	6,390	1,272	4,607	511	35
San Diego	Wikipedia:California	1,261,196	502	5	23	166	308	3,502	609	1,845	1,049	16
San Francisco	California	733,799	1,037	14	17	514	493	4,696	692	3,199	804	32
San Jose	California	934,553	402	4	23	114	261	2,575	476	1,412	686	36

SOURCES: FBI Uniform Crime Reports (2007)

States

Map of violent crime per 100,000 people in the USA by state in 2004.

< 100      >100-200      >200-300      >300-400

>400-500      >500-600      >600-700      >700-800

>800

Crime rates vary greatly across the states. Overall, New England had the lowest crime rates, for both violent and property crimes. New England states also had the lowest homicide rates in the country.

A closer look at per capita homicide rates for each state from FBI Uniform Crime Reports Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that Louisiana's per capita homicide rate has ranked 1st every single year from 1989 to 2009, which is 21 consecutive years.

Southern states had the highest overall crime rates. Crime can also be isolated to one particular part of a state. Lafayette, Louisiana, for instance had 6 murders per 100,000 people in 2004, while New Orleans, Louisiana, had 56 murders per 100,000 people according to Bureau of Justice Statistics for the same year.

Almost all of the nation's wealthiest twenty states, which included northern mid-western and western states such as Wisconsin and California, had crime rates below the national average. In addition to having the country's lowest crime rates, New England states also had the country's highest median household income, while the Southern states have the lowest.

This contrasts starkly to some of the nation's poorer states such as Georgia, Florida or Louisiana. Louisiana had a crime rate 27% and a homicide rate 130.9% above the national average and ranked as the nation's fourth poorest state with a median household income 20% below the national median. While poorer states generally have higher crime rates, several states who fell below the national median for household income such as Maine and Kentucky also had crime rates below the national average, while some wealthier states such as Maryland and Hawaii had crime rates above the national average.

Incorrect values have been reported on this chart, by someone who used wiki markup to make the whole chart disappear. That is the common sort of unethical behaviour I associate with deletionists and I have to say, with the right wing, so use caution, but I expect the numbers are more inconvenient for the would-be deletor than actually inaccurate

State	Population	Number of Crimes per 100,000 persons (Crime Rates)
		Violent Crime Rates					Property Crime Rates				Total	Rank
		Violent Crime	Homicide	Rape	Robbery	Serious Assault	Murder	Burglary	Larceny	Motor vehicle theft
Alabama	4,530,182	426.6	9,597.6	8,387.5	1,334.4	2,498.1	4,025.0	986.0	2,729.5	309.6	4,451.6	5
Alaska	655,435	634.5	5.6	85.1	68.2	475.6	3,382.8	575.6	2,465.4	341.8	4,017.3
Arizona	5,743,834	504.1	7.2	33.0	134.4	329.4	5,340.5	990.4	3,387.2	962.9	5,844.6
Arkansas	2,752,629	499.1	6.4	42.4	86.2	364.1	4,013.0	1,093.5	2,683.8	235.8	4,512.1
California	35,893,799	551.8	7,776.7	626.8	172.1	346.3	3,419.0	9,685.1	2,030.1	703.8	11,970.8	4
Colorado	4,601,403	373.5	4.4	42.5	81.5	245.1	3,919.3	717.3	2,679.0	522.9	4,292.8
Connecticut	3,503,604	286.3	2.6	20.7	120.5	142.6	2,627.2	444.4	1,868.1	314.7	2,913.5
Delaware	830,364	568.4	2.0	41.5	146.7	378.1	3,163.9	648.3	2,257.1	258.6	3,732.3
District of Columbia	553,523	1,371.2	35.8	40.1	578.5	716.9	4,859.1	712.9	2,627.2	1,519.0	1,190
Florida	17,397,161	711.3	5.4	38.0	172.4	495.5	4,179.7	956.1	2,773.3	450.2	4,891.0
Georgia	8,829,383	455.5	6.9	27.0	154.7	266.8	4,265.9	940.0	2,825.0	501.0	4,721.4
Hawaii	1,262,840	254.4	2,887.6	2,608.4	74.8	1,500.7	4,792.8	857.4	3,252.8	682.6	5,047.2
Idaho	1,393,262	244.9	2.2	40.9	17.2	184.6	2,794.4	547.3	2,051.5	195.5	3,039.3
Illinois	12,713,634	542.9	6.1	33.2	177.2	326.4	3,186.1	597.3	2,271.3	317.4	3,729.0
Indiana	6,237,569	325.4	5.1	28.9	102.2	189.2	3,37.6	676.0	2,383.5	338.1	3,723.0
Iowa	2,954,451	270.9	1.6	26.7	38.0	204.5	2,905.3	615.1	2,107.3	182.9	3,176.2
Kansas	2,735,502	374.5	4.5	40.4	66.3	263.4	3,973.5	731.1	2,934.0	308.4	4,348.0
Kentucky	4,145,922	244.9	5.7	29.9	78.8	130.5	2,537.7	624.8	1,701.3	211.6	2,782.6
Louisiana	4,515,770	638.7	12.7	35.8	145.4	444.9	4,410.2	1,004.5	2,969.2	436.6
Maine	1,317,253	103.5	1.4	23.9	21.9	56.3	2,409.6	481.4	1,829.3	98.9	2,513.1
Maryland	5,558,058	--------	9.4	23.7	229.6	437.8	3,640.2	660.0	2,335.1	645.2	4,340.7
Massachusetts	6,416,505	458.8	2.6	28.0	116.4	311.7	2,459.7	537.2	1,578.8	343.7	2,918.5
Michigan	10,104,206	492.2	6.4	54.3	112.2	319.4	8,057.6	635.7	1,929.8	500.6	3,066.1
Minnesota	5,100,958	269.6	2.2	41.6	79.8	146.0	3,039.0	549.9	2,224.2	265.0	3,308.6
Mississippi	2,902,966	295.1	7.8	40.0	86.2	161.1	3,478.5	952.9	2,254.2	271.4	3,773.6
Missouri	5,754,618	490.5	6.2	25.7	115.2	343.4	3,903.5	703.3	2,750.2	450.0	4,394.0
Montana	926,865	293.8	3.2	29.5	25.1	236.0	2,936.2	379.2	2,382.4	174.6	3,230.0
Nebraska	1,747,704	308.6	2.3	35.5	65.1	205.7	3,519.6	562.2	2,654.9	302.5	3,828.2
Nevada	2,334,771	615.9	7.4	40.9	210.1	357.6	4,206.6	991.2	2,246.0	969.5	4,822.5
New Hampshire	1,299,500	167.0	1.4	35.3	38.5	91.8	2,040.1	382.1	1,508.5	149.4	1,675.5
New Jersey	8,698,879	355.7	4.5	15.3	150.3	185.6	2,429.2	471.7	1,609.1	348.4	2,784.9
New Mexico	1,903,289	687.3	8.9	54.6	108.3	515.5	4,197.7	1,046.8	2,735.7	415.2	4,885.0
New York	19,227,088	488.6	49.6	186.8	174.3	2,447.0	2,198.6	367.7	1,617.7	213.3	2,640.2	3
North Carolina	9,767,933	908.8	146.2	101.4	1,898.9	2,768.2	7,164.9	1,184.8	1,659.4	313.3	5,090.0	2
North Dakota	634,366	79.4	1.4	25.1	6.1	46.8	1,916.6	301.1	1,472.7	142.8	1,996.0
Ohio	11,459,011	341.8	4.5	40.5	153.1	143.6	3,673.2	846.1	2,470.6	356.5	4,015.0
Oklahoma	3,523,553	500.5	5.3	44.2	87.7	363.3	4,242.1	1,000.2	2,874.1	367.7	4,742.6
Oregon	3,594,586	298.3	2.5	35.7	76.5	183.6	4,631.3	836.6	3,279.0	515.6	4,929.6
Pennsylvania	12,406,292	411.1	5.2	28.5	148.9	228.4	2,415.0	438.8	1,726.5	249.6	2,926.1
Rhode Island	1,080,632	247.4	2.4	29.6	67.6	147.7	2,884.1	505.7	2,001.0	377.4	3,131.5
South Carolina	4,198,068	784.2	6.9	40.9	129.7	606.7	4,504.8	1,034.4	3,097.9	372.5	5,289.0
South Dakota	770,883	171.5	2.3	43.8	14.8	110.5	1,933.5	408.5	1,415.3	109.7	2,105.0
Tennessee	5,900,962	695.2	5.9	37.6	149.8	501.8	4,306.5	1,020.3	2,866.8	419.4	5,001.7
Texas	22,490,022	540.5	6.1	37.3	159.3	337.9	4,494.0	978.7	3,097.0	418.3
Utah	2,389,039	236.0	1.9	39.1	51.7	143.3	4,085.6	637.1	3,128.2	320.3	4,321.6
Vermont	621,394	112.0	2.6	24.5	12.2	72.7	2,308.2	544.9	1,670.8	92.5	2,420.2
Virginia	7,459,827	275.6	5.2	23.7	92.6	154.1	2,676.6	386.0	2,057.2	233.4	2,952.2
Washington	6,203,788	343.8	3.1	46.1	94.6	200.2	4,849.2	977.3	3,175.0	696.9	5,193.0
West Virginia	1,815,354	271.2	3.7	17.6	42.3	207.6	2,506.2	602.2	1,698.1	206.0	2,777.4
Wisconsin	5,509,026	209.6	2.8	20.6	73.8	112.4	2,663.1	433.0	2,023.6	206.5	2,872.2
Wyoming	506,529	229.6	2.2	22.1	13.2	192.1	3,334.3	540.5	2,636.0	157.7	3,563.9
United States (Total)	293,655,404	465.5	5.5	32.2	136.7	291.1	3,517.1	729.9	2,365.9	421.3	3,980.6	(26)

SOURCE: US Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2004Incorrect values have been reported for this chart, by someone who used wiki markup to make the whole chart disappear. Use caution, but I expect the numbers are probably ok

This article contains content from Wikipedia. Current versions of the GNU FDL article Crime in the United States on WP may contain information useful to the improvement of this article

WP

See also

• Wikipedia:List of United States criminals
• Wikipedia:United States cities by crime rate
• Wikipedia:Race and crime in the United States
• Wikipedia:Rape in the United States of America
• Wikipedia:Gangs in the United States
• Wikipedia:National Crime Information Center Interstate Identification Index
• Wikipedia:America's Safest and Most Dangerous Cities

Related:

• Wikipedia:Terrorism in the United States
• Wikipedia:Incarceration in the United States
• Wikipedia:Law enforcement in the United States

External links

• The FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
• Surviving Crime
• 15 Most Wanted by U.S. Marshals
• DEA Fugitives, Major International Fugitives
• Metropolitan Police Department: Most Wanted
• New York State's 100 Most Wanted Fugitives
• All Most Wanted - official website of the Los Angeles Police Department