Raw Data: Crime Rate Continues to Fall

Membership Ticker

Monika Bauerlein, CEO

Dear reader,

This is big. $25 million big. I'm excited to write to you about The Moment for Mother Jones: a five-year push to make key investments and strengthen our work at a time when journalism faces threats—both political and economic—like never before. We’ve raised more than 90 percent of our $25 million goal, and now that we're in the homestretch, we're asking the entire MoJo community to be part of it. Read more about The Moment and please join us with a donation today: Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar, up to $500,000 total.

$500,000 MATCHING GIFT: Join The Moment for Mother Jones and your gift will be DOUBLED as part of this special, five-year effort to strengthen our journalism at a time when it’s needed like never before.

The FBI released its latest crime statistics this week, and although absolute levels in the U.S. are still high by international standards, they show that crime of all types was down in 2009. In some cases the numbers were quite significant: murder is down 7% and auto theft is down 17%, for example.

Why? Who knows? More policing, maybe. Demographic changes. The continuing effects of unleaded gasoline. Whatever the cause, crime rates have been falling for two decades now, and they’ve been falling everywhere. Not just New York City and not just places with high-profile police chiefs. So here’s your raw data for the day: two decades of uniform crime reporting from the FBI, all shown in rates per 100,000 inhabitants. Just so you know.