Violent Crime Falls in 2008

Justin Pierson
Soc. 313
Post #3

This article was found in the September 15 of USA Today and summarizes the FBI's annual crime report results. The article claims that violent crimes have declined for the second straight year. The report includes statistics gathered from over seventeen thousand law enforcement agencies around the United States. Most notably the article claimed that murder had declined 6.8% and car thefts had declined a whopping 17%. The report also claimed that only 89,000 rapes were recorded in 2008 which was the fewest to be reported in nearly two decades. The article tries to find a correlation between the slow moving economy and the decrease in crime, claiming that while violent crimes have declined there has been an increase in opportunistic property crimes, people are looking to make a quick buck by stealing items that include GPS devices and IPODS.

The FBI's report seems to be a good example of control waves that we discussed in chapter two of the Innes text. The numbers that this FBI report are comparing current numbers to could have been extremely high therefore making it seem as if there has been a dramatic decline in crime. Also this report only reflects the crimes that have been reported, confidence in law enforcement may have also declined and people are reporting crimes against them less frequently. Increased policing of violent individuals may have increased giving people less opportunity to commit violent acts. The important point is that just because the reporting of violent crime is down that does not mean that violent acts are being committed less frequently. Trying to correlate the decrease in auto thefts with the poor economy is also a deceiving move, there may be less car thefts because the technology surrounding automobile security has become more advanced, better car alarms, and this could be deterring thieves and resulting in less thefts. These reports are very deceiving, violent crimes seemed to have been declining but what about non-violent crimes and white collar crimes the report fails to address these issues. The FBI and the media, in this instance, seem to be directing the moral panic away from crime and toward our economic struggles, with this article mentioning the poor economy it seems as if it is trying to convince us that we should not worry so much about being the victim of a violent crime but we ought to worry about the state of our economy.