Serious Crime Rate Down, FBI Says

Americans were victims of slightly fewer serious crimes reported to police last year as the murder rate hit its lowest point in 35 years and rape, robbery and assault remained near low levels.

The FBI’s final figures for crimes reported in 2000, released Monday, showed slight decreases in the total number of murders, robberies, assaults and burglaries and small increases in rapes, larcenies and auto thefts.

The rate--meaning the number of incidents per 100,000 residents--dropped for all those crimes.

The report marked the nation’s ninth consecutive year of fewer reported crimes and a 22% decrease since 1991. It also found the smallest year-to-year overall decline in the same period, suggesting that the dramatic downward spiral may have hit a plateau.

“Compared to the marked drops noted in recent years, the current slight decline in the index crime estimate is certain to be viewed by many as no change at all from the previous year’s,” the report said. “Only after publication of the next few issues . . . will we know whether the figures for 2000 signaled an end to the current downward trend or were merely a bump in the road.”

James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University in Boston, was less equivocal. “Crime levels are flat,” he said. “The great 1990s crime drop is over.”

Republicans have attributed the last decade’s large reduction in crime to tougher sentencing rules pressed by GOP lawmakers, which prompted a prison-building boom to accommodate more inmates and longer sentences.

Democrats argued that the strong national economy under former Democratic President Clinton, and its accompanying historically low unemployment rate, played a larger role in pushing down the numbers of crimes reported.

The FBI crime report is based on data reported voluntarily from 17,000 local and state law enforcement agencies.