Falling Crime

The FBI reports a turnaround

In the worst mass murder in New York City history, ten people, including eight children, were shot dead, execution-style, in a Brooklyn apartment last week. In New Hampshire, Christopher Wilder's cross-country odyssey of kidnap, rape and murder ended in his shooting death during a struggle with police. In Texas, Henry Lee Lucas, who boasts of killing some 360 people, was condemned to death for one of those murders. Against that shocking tableau of recent criminal violence, many Americans might find it difficult to credit some good news from Washington last week: crime, said the FBI, declined more sharply during 1983 than in any other year since 1960.

The number of serious crimes reported to the police last year, according to the bureau's Uniform Crime Report, dipped 7%. The downturn comes after a 3% drop in 1982 and no increase in 1981. The 1983 decrease was across the board; violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) were off 5%, while property crimes fell 7%. The biggest declines: burglary (--10%) and arson (--13%). The trend was consistent throughout the country, affecting communities of all sizes.

FBI and other police officials conceded that the two-year fall-off brings the number of serious reported crimes down only from the levels of 1980 and 1981, the highest ever recorded. But some criminologists are cautiously suggesting that the statistics do mark the beginning of a long-term decline. A principal cause, they argue, is the aging of the post-World War II baby-boom generation, which is now maturing from its most crime-prone years.

Reagan Administration officials prefer more political explanations. "This marvelous news proves we are beginning to win the battle against crime," said Attorney General William French Smith. Steven Schlesinger, head of the Justice Department's bureau of justice statistics, attributes the new numbers to a national hard line on crime that has led to tougher sentences and sent the prison population skyrocketing. Schlesinger and others also give credit to the recent proliferation of neighborhood crime watch and other community self-protection projects.

Some analysts are so distrustful of FBI statistics that they refuse to attach any meaning at all to the latest numbers. The Police Foundation's Lawrence Sherman charges that the statistics are not only riddled with errors but subject to all kinds of bureaucratic and political manipulation on the local level. Has crime really declined? "It's anybody's guess," says Sherman. "I'm not going to stand up and start cheering."