Volume 1 No. 1
It seems difficult to find good news in today's world. Among the many nagging social problems, the one that attracts considerable public attention is crime. Crime is one of the major concerns of American citizens. Interestingly, though, if we look at crime rates over time, we find some encouraging trends in recent years not only for the United States as a whole, but for North Carolina as well.
North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation recently released crime statistics for 1996. After decades of increase, we find that crime rates are continuing to decrease for the third year now. For example, violent crime rates reported to the police fell seven percent in 1996 with the murder and robbery rates dropping by ten and nine percent, respectively. The burglary rate also fell six percent last year. In contrast, motor vehicle theft continued to climb--adding eight percent to last year's rate. Since the murder rate reached its peak in 1993, it has dropped 27 percent. Since then, burglary and robbery also have fallen by 12 and 15 percent, respectively. In addition, another source of crime statistics comes from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) who report that 1995's drop in violent crime is the largest decrease in any year since BJS began collecting victimization data in 1973.
Some of the most plausible arguments for the decline in crime rates in recent years are related to demographics (the drop in the number of youths in our population--those individuals most likely to be involved in crime), to a stronger economy, and to less drug abuse and to stability in the drug market--the crack-cocaine market has seen an end to the turf wars which contributed to the soaring violent crime rates of the 1980s.
Some major points that characterize crime trends in North Carolina during the past decade include:
For North Carolina, as well as the nation, crime rates are on the decline after two decades of increase.
When we speak of crime rates, we are talking about reporting crimes by using the population across geographic locations or across different time periods as a standard. This allows us to make meaningful comparisons among various places like cities and across time periods such as across years. For example, we expect New York City to have more robberies than Raleigh during a year because there are more people who live in New York City. That's why we speak of robberies per 100,000 population rather than simply the number of robberies that occur. In fact, Raleigh usually has more homicides during the year than Durham, but Durham typically has the higher homicide rate because there are more homicides in Durham relative to the number of people who live there.
When we compare the crime rates of North Carolina with those of the US over the past twenty years, we find that North Carolina's crime rate has climbed to reach and surpass the crime rate of the nation in 1992 (figure 1). Examining violent and property crimes separately, we see that the state's violent crime rate (figure 2) has converged but not quite reached the national violent crime rate. On the other hand, North Carolina's property crime rate (figure 3) surpassed the US property crime rate in 1992 and continues to exceed it. When we compare different types of serious crimes, the US has had higher murder rates in 1984, 1986, and 1988 and has higher rape and robbery rates compared to North Carolina's rates across the entire twenty-year period. The only year that the US had higher aggravated assault rates than North Carolina's was in 1988; otherwise, the state exceeds the nation in the rate of this violent behavior. By and large, the United State's burglary and larceny rates have been higher than North Carolina's until around the end of the 1980s when North Carolina's rates surpassed the nation's. During the entire period, though, the motor vehicle theft rate has continually been higher in North Carolina than the nation.
Although urban areas typically have higher crime rates than rural areas, the recent peak in North Carolina's crime rates of the early 1990s has been followed by a decrease in urban areas but has been followed by a plateau or slight increase in rural areas (figure 4). On the whole, property crime rates (figure 5) are more comparable in urban and rural areas in North Carolina, than are violent crime rates (figure 6) which remains about 50 percent higher in urban areas.
With regard to homicide offending and victimization, increasing rates typify trends for persons under the age of 29--especially, those ages 15 to 19 whose homicide offending and victimization rates rose around two and a half times between 1988 and 1995 in North Carolina. In contrast, the homicide offending and victimization rates for persons aged 30 and over have declined.
The largest disparities between whites and nonwhites exist for robbery arrest rates followed by rape and assault arrest rates. Interestingly, there are little differences between white and nonwhites for burglary and larceny arrest rates. When we examine the arrest trends for whites since 1986, we see a relatively flat trend whereas nonwhite arrests show more variation across the time period. By and large, nonwhite arrest rates increased until the early 1990s and then declined as shown in the larceny arrest and burglary arrest trends. Although the violent nonwhite arrest rates of murder, robbery and assault increase between 1986 and 1993, the rape arrest rates remained steady until 1991 when they began declining.
The most interesting comparison between white and nonwhite homicide offending rates in North Carolina since 1988 is found among youths. The clear distinction is the enormous increase in homicide offending rates for nonwhite 15 to 24 year olds. The increase for these youths peaked in 1993 and declined subsequently. Although we saw a slight increase between 1989 and 1990 for white 20 to 24 year olds, the rate for that age-race-specific group has decreased since 1990. On the whole, the homicide offending rate for white 15 to 24 year olds has remained relatively stable throughout the 1988 to 1995 period.
