Violent Crime Labeled ‘Ticking Bomb’

Violent crime in the United States is a ticking bomb ready to explode, a commission of crime experts reported Friday.

The Council on Crime in America, contradicting official figures that crime levels are declining, said in its first report that statistics “remain at historic highs.”

“America is a ticking violent crime bomb, and there is little time remaining to prepare for the blast,” said the report, which noted a rise in violence among young people.

The bipartisan council is headed by former Atty. Gen. Griffin B. Bell and former White House drug-policy chief William J. Bennett.

At a news conference releasing the document, Bennett and eight law enforcement officials, including the attorneys general of Florida and Colorado and the Philadelphia prosecutor, painted a grim picture.

They said official FBI statistics on crime--which are based on crimes reported to police--represent only the tip of the iceberg.

The report said its measure of the crime rate--based on surveys of victims and not just crimes reported to police--shows violent crime, including murder, rape, assault and burglary, was 5.6 times higher. Based on victims’ reports, there were nearly 11 million violent crimes in 1993 compared to the roughly 2 million officially reported.

Official crime rates have been dropping in the 1990s, but the decrease has been concentrated in big, crime-prone cities such as New York and Houston, the report said.

The experts estimated that the risk of being a victim of violent crime in the United States is greater than that of being injured in a car accident--51.5 per 1,000 adults a year compared to 22 per 1,000.

The council, financed by private foundations to hammer home the extent of crime in the United States, warned that those committing crimes are getting younger. Philadelphia prosecutor Lynne Abraham told of one 13-year-old boy suspected of two or three killings.

The fastest growing type of murder in the United States is by youth gangs, the report said.

The experts disputed a perception that blacks committed the majority of violent crimes against whites, saying most violence did not cross the race barrier.

The report said the commonly held view that most murders were committed among people who know each other was no longer so, saying most murders were now among strangers.

The group favored tougher sentencing and more prisons and opposed a current Republican-led move in Congress to repeal the ban on assault weapons.