Our reading for the project comes from the Pew Research Center. They start off talking about how violent crime has fallen sharply over the past quarter century(Gramlich, 2019). In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses, which involve force or threat of force (“Violent Crime”,2010). The data found in the tableau project backs up these findings. For each of the four regions of the United States, the murder and non-negligent manslaughter rate is nearly 50% lower today compared to 1994(“FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program”,2014). The fall was particularly steep in the late 1990s and is still falling today. Over the same time period, property crime has also fallen substantially. In the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims(“Property Crime”, 2010). The article goes on to talk about how Americans don’t think that crime is going down when it really is. This is related to some of our classroom discussions where we talk about how the media and politicians only talk about how to deter crime. They don’t mention that the rate of violent and property crime is falling. Also mentioned are the geographical differences in the crime rate which I think would surprise some people. The most dangerous states are not Illinois or California but are mainly in the South(Gramlich 2019). This also relates to when we talked in class about how the South uses the death penalty the most and yet still has the highest murder rate. One of the most shocking points in the article is that only 45% of violent crimes were reported and only 36% of property crimes were reported to police(Gramlich 2019). Now, the reasons behind the drop in crime are also very interesting. One of the possible reasons is the legalization of abortion around 20 years prior. The theory goes that women with low income and maybe not the best home life were the ones who now had access to legal abortions. If abortion were illegal they would have children, who would have been raised in tough environments and more likely to commit crimes. For this project, I decided to look at the standard average per 100,000 people for each of the crime rates. This allows for easy comparison across areas with different populations.
Reference List
Gramlich, John. “5 Facts about Crime in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, Pew
“Violent Crime.” FBI, FBI, 25 July 2011, ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/violent-crime
“Property Crime.” FBI, FBI, 26 July 2011, ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.- 2010/property-crime.