Serious Crime Falls in 1999

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN. AP
01:05 AM ET 11/22/99

WASHINGTON (AP) - Serious reported crime showed an unusually large 10 percent decline during the first half of 1999, prompting one expert to conclude that lawfulness is becoming contagious. Led by drops of 13 percent in murders, 14 percent in burglaries and 12 percent in auto thefts, the FBI's preliminary report released Sunday extended the nationwide crime decline to 7 1/2 years.

The report surprised experts used to seeing single-digit declines during the 1990s. The overall crime figure had declined by only 5 percent, 4 percent and 3 percent in the preceding three first-half-year reports.

And criminologists said the lone discordant note - a 1 percent rise in murders among cities of more than a million residents - did not foreshadow a future rise in crime, but rather that there probably is some irreducible minimum level of crime.

This year, among other violent crimes, robbery dropped 10 percent; rape, 8 percent and aggravated assault, 7 percent. In other property crime, larceny-theft declined 8 percent. Nationally, the report gives only percentage changes between the first six months of 1999 and of 1998.

``This is astounding,'' said James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University professor of criminal justice. ``No one could have predicted the drops would have been this deep.''

Experts cited a series of anti-crime measures, a growing economy, the aging of baby boomers and the decline of crack cocaine markets as explanations.

But Fox also discerned ``a reverse contagion effect.'' ``Lawfulness is becoming the norm, and it's contagious,'' he said. ``Cities around the country are investing in crime programs as never before. Rather than hiding behind double locked doors, citizens are getting involved in their communities.''

Fox and Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University also cited the growth of community policing, expanded incarceration, crime prevention and anti-gun efforts by the federal and local authorities.

Attorney General Janet Reno credited Clinton administration programs to put more police on the street, the thwarted sale of an estimated 400,000 guns to felons because of the Brady Act and growing federal-state-local gun prosecutions. ``But we cannot become complacent,'' Reno said.

Republicans credited measures they passed to lengthen prison sentences and noted the nation is still above its lowest crime rates.

Fox and Blumstein were not alarmed by the 1 percent rise in big-city murders. ``It doesn't signal the numbers will start up, but rather there is a point where crime gets as low as it can go,'' Fox said.

The murder figure also is influenced by New York, where homicides through July 4 rose from 309 in 1998 to 345 this year, while all other major crimes continued to decline. 

Earlier in the 7 1/2 -year decline, big-city murders including New York's saw the steepest declines. ``But 7-percent-a-year declines can't go on forever,'' Blumstein said. ``The things that would signal that a rise in crime is coming don't seem to be out there - violence associated with drug markets or guns or economic frustration and need.''

``In the big cities, we've gotten rid of the murderous violence that is readily preventable through gun controls, drug market changes and the strength of the economy. At some point, we end up with a wide variety of personal disputes,'' Blumstein added.

The big-city murder figures were the leading indicators of the crime decline in the 1990s, because crack gangs and the guns they gave juveniles showed up first in major urban areas, Blumstein said. Over time that problem radiated out to smaller and smaller cities, and the solutions followed the same path.

Indeed, this year's FBI figures show that in general, the smaller the city the larger the decline in murders. The three groups of cities between 100,000 and 1 million showed murder declines of 11 percent through 14 percent. The three groups between 10,000 and 100,000 showed murder declines of 23 percent through 27 percent.

Overall crime dropped in every region and in every size community. The declines were 12 percent in the West, 11 percent in the Midwest, 10 percent in the Northeast and 7 percent in the South.

Rural areas had an 11 percent decline and suburban areas, 10 percent. Cities of 25,000 to 100,000 had the largest urban decline, 11 percent; the smallest drop was in cities of more than a million, 6 percent.

Figures for individual states and cities are available on the FBI's Web site, www.fbi.gov

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