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July 23, 2002, 9:00 a.m. Is Crime Increasing? Understanding the latest numbers. By Eli Lehrer

s the economic slowdown drew to a close in late June, a long run of good news about crime rates came to a screeching halt. Suddenly, newspaper headlines were screaming that 2001 saw rising crime in America for the first time in a decade. Late last week, Canada also reported slight increases in crime. Following a record-busting nine-year run of declining crime rates, the FBI reported that America had seen a two-percent crime increase last year just as the economy slid into recession.

While it is tempting to blame the slumping economy, economic barometers like the unemployment rate have never correlated with crime rates. The 1990s were witness to the only American economic expansion on record during which crime rates fell. Crime plummeted during the Great Depression and the severe recession of the early 1980s. The late 1960s and late 1980s, on the other hand, saw the combination of full employment, rising wages, and soaring crime rates. In any case, crime had to increase sooner or later: Murder would have vanished completely in many cities around 2010 had the trends of the late 1990s continued.

The bad news about crime, however, is both more and less important than it seems. On one hand, 2001's increases in crime were so tiny that Americans should not panic — yet. On the other hand, those increases reflect a worrisome retreat from the combination of effective community-oriented policing and ample investment in incarceration that have made the United States the safest large Western nation.

While citizens rightly worry about any increase in violence and theft — particularly one that follows a decade of good news — 2001 saw very little movement in crime rates. Accounting for population growth, violent crime actually fell fractionally, while property crime rose only bit more than one percent. Over 60 percent of the total increase in the crime occurred in the larceny/theft category, which includes offenses as trivial as stealing a candy bar. Many big cities continued to get safer too: Crime continued to decline in Chicago; New York; Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; and a host of other important urban centers.

Still, the recent increases in crime deserve serious attention. Motor-vehicle theft rose nearly six percent in 2001 and murder increased over three percent. Robbery rose four percent nationally and soared almost eight-and-a-half percent in the suburbs. Both morally misguided youth and serious, committed career criminals commit these types of crimes; and both are becoming more prevalent.

To begin with, the United States has begun to let more thugs out of prison. In 2001, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that prison populations fell for the first time in nearly 20 years as a record 635,000 inmates were dumped on the streets. Thanks to correctional facilities that do almost nothing to rehabilitate offenders, the convicts leaving prison are some of the worst criminals ever and recidivism has hit all-time highs.

But the increasing number of released thugs can't entirely explain the increase: Nearly as many people left prison while crime rates dropped sharply, during the late 1990s. The increasing levels of violence among juveniles do explain some of change. Children born at the height of the crack epidemic are now entering their teens. Raised without fathers, decent schools, or viable role models in neighborhoods where violence is the norm, they have begun to emerge as the "super-predator" caste William Bennett, John DiIulio, and John Walters foresaw in their 1996 book Body Count.

The last half of 2001 also saw a worrisome but understandable change in law-enforcement strategy: Police officers withdrew from neighborhoods to focus on a war they had little ability to influence. In cities ranging from Portland, Maine to San Diego — indeed, in just about every city large enough to support a shopping mall — the aftermath of September 11 involved massive reassignments of officers from neighborhood patrols to glorified security-guard work near prominent landmarks. While police chiefs probably had little choice but to move officers around, crime-ridden, low-income neighborhoods got hammered as a result.

Indeed, the whole of the national increase in crime in 2001 occurred during the second half of the year, much of it after September 11. According to the FBI, crime actually fell about 0.3 percent (almost 1.5 percent, accounting for population growth) in the first six months of 2001. September 11 reversed the trend. "It was distracting, we pulled resources out of the neighborhoods" says Lowell, Mass., police superintendent Edward Davis, whose city had led the nation in crime decreases during the 1990s. "We were spending inordinate amounts of overtime on things like having people with rifles standing around the reservoir."

America's crime rates are still 40-percent lower than they were in the early 1990s, and continuing declines in violent crime show that many policies continue to work well. Police who had been hastily reassigned to antiterrorist duties have almost all returned to the streets. But unless prisons and schools work harder to help our most troubled citizens, the nation could well find itself confronted with the enormous costs of a permanent criminal underclass.

The fast-dropping crime rates of the 1990s could not continue forever. In the preceding decade, America had hit upon an effective system for fighting crime and restoring safety to its cities and towns. One can only hope the years to come will not see us abandoning it.

— Eli Lehrer is a senior editor of The American Enterprise.