U.S. Violent Crime Maintains Dip

Violent crime in America continued its pronounced downward trend in 1996, dropping by 10% from the year before, the Justice Department reported Saturday.

Aided by this decline, overall crime victimization--a category covering violent and property offenses--stood at the lowest level since the government began its door-to-door tabulation of lawbreaking in 1973.

“All over our country, crime is dropping,” President Clinton said in hailing the decreases as part of his Saturday radio address. “Responsibility and respect for the law are on the rise.”

The data measure both crimes reported to police and those not reported. The information was collected by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics in a survey of about 100,000 people.

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The report estimated that 2.7 million violent crimes were carried out last year--a rate of 12.4 per 1,000 U.S. residents ages 12 and older. This compared with 3 million violent offenses in 1995--a rate of 13.8 per 1,000.

Violent crime, as counted by the National Crime Victimization Survey, includes rape and sexual assault; robbery; and assault. It does not include murder or manslaughter because the survey often relies on interviewing the victims.

The FBI’s unified crime reports, a separate measure of crime based on reports to state and local police officials across the country, said last month that the murder rate dropped 10% from 1995 to 1996.

The FBI reported a 6% nationwide drop in 1996 in overall violent crime, based on the data from law enforcement authorities.

The Justice Department survey found that during 1996, about 27.4 million household property crimes were attempted or completed, a rate of 266 per 1,000 households. That compared with 29.5 million during 1995, or 291 such crimes per 1,000 households.

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“This remarkable drop in the crime rate is no accident,” Clinton said, adding that “community policing is at the center of this success.”

By region, residents of the West were more likely to be victims of violent crime than those living elsewhere. Among those 12 or older, the crime rate in the West was 51.5 per 1,000 people, compared with 43.7 per 1,000 in the Midwest, 37.7 per 1,000 in the Northeast and 37.5 per 1,000 in the South.

Households in the West also had the greatest risk of property crime, which is theft, motor vehicle theft and burglary. According to the report, the rate for the West was 345.6 per 1,000 households, compared with 259.6 per 1,000 for the South, 249.6 per 1,000 for the Midwest and 215.2 per 1,000 for the Northeast.

The report gave no breakdown of statistics by state or city.

The Justice Department survey also found that blacks are now more likely than whites to report a violent crime to police.

“By itself, this is a very interesting statistic, because it suggests that changes in the [racial] compositions of police departments and in policing have united them with minority communities more than in the past,” said Gerald M. Caplan, dean of the McGeorge Law School in Sacramento.

“It could be that police are being seen as a valuable source for improving public safety and not so much as armies of occupation” in predominantly African American communities, he said.

Caplan, who served as a Justice Department official and as counsel for Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, said he sees a significant development behind the drop in crime rates.

“There has been a gradual, low-visibility change in society’s attitudes toward criminal behavior,” he said. “In the old days, society looked at crime with two heads that were not on speaking terms: One said that the perpetrator was an offender who should be punished; the other saw the offender as a victim of society’s mistreatment or neglect who should be rehabilitated.

“Now we have more of a single view, where law enforcement is not on the defensive and judges are expected to sentence offenders.”

The survey also found that:

* Last year, 4 in 10 violent crimes and 3 in 10 property crimes were reported to the police.

* People ages 12 to 19 suffered higher rates of violent crime than those 25 or older. And those 12 to 19 had a violent crime victimization rate 20 times higher than those 65 or older.

* About half of the victims of nonfatal violent crime knew their attacker.

* As household income levels decrease, rates of violent crime increase.