Violent Crimes Down 12.4% in ‘95, Study Finds

The Justice Department reported new evidence Sunday of a continuing decline in violent crime, but the figures showed urban black victims experienced less of a decline than other groups.

In its annual survey of violent-crime victims, the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics said the national rate for rape, robbery, assault and other violent crimes fell by an overall 12.4% between 1994 and 1995.

The bureau said the fall was the largest recorded since the annual National Crime Victimization Survey began in 1973.

For blacks, however, the decline was only 10.4%, compared with 12.8% for whites. There was no significant difference in violent-crime rates between Latinos and the general population.

The new data fit the pattern established by FBI statistics of a downward trend in violent crime after a peak in the 1980s. The Justice Department survey, based largely on interviews with a sample of 100,000 victims, differs from most other similar studies, which rely only on crimes reported to police. It provides no breakdown of data by cities or regions.

President Clinton hailed the new figures as showing the success of his anti-crime measures.

“The first full year of our crime bill produced the largest drop in violent crime in 22 years,” the president said, referring to a measure to put 100,000 new community police officers on the street, ban assault weapons and toughen penalties for gang and drug violence.

“Now we must press forward,” the president’s statement said. “Fighting the scourge of juvenile crime and violence is my top law enforcement priority for the next four years.”

Clinton urged Congress to enact the administration’s Anti-Gang and Youth Violence Strategy Act, which he submitted in February with support from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). It would provide more prosecutors, increase penalties for gang violence, extend federal restrictions making it harder for teenage criminals to obtain guns and provide additional youth counseling and after-school recreational resources for violence-prone youngsters.

Republicans had a different slant on the new statistics. Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime, said: “We shouldn’t feel too secure--crime is not down nearly enough.”

The yearly survey covers crime victims 12 years old and above; it excludes murder because victims cannot be interviewed. The survey is believed by some experts to reflect national crime trends more accurately than those based on crimes reported to police because it captures unreported crimes.

“Urban areas have typically recorded the highest levels of violent [acts] and rural areas the lowest,” the study said. “But the broadest decline in violent offenses during 1995 was in the suburbs, where there were significant declines in all types of personal [crime-related attacks] except rape and sexual assault.”

Suburban areas registered a decline of 15.1%, rural areas 11% and cities 10.7%, the figures showed.

Among crimes of violence, the most striking decline was in aggravated assaults, which fell 24.7% for white victims and 24% for blacks. Among household crimes, the burglary rate dropped 12.9% and household thefts fell by 8.4%. Motor vehicle thefts showed no appreciable change.

Crime victims totaled 38.4 million in 1995, compared with 42.3 million in 1994, the study found. In 1992 there were an estimated 42.8 million crime victims, and in 1993 there were 43.5 million.

Some experts, including Jack Levin of Northeastern University’s program for the study of violence, said the aging population might have contributed to the decline. He told Associated Press that “the baby boomers are mellowing out--they are no longer committing the high-risk violent offenses like armed robbery and aggravated assault.”