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as a criminal justice major, i agree with paul here as the media loves to hype violence. Crime over all is following a decreasing trend yet the population percentage of people in the correctional stage of the law is increasing. One thing to clear the air up of how crime statistics are gathered and used. The most important is the Uniform Crime Report which is put out every year by the FBI. The FBI tallies a yearly report on Index 1 crimes which include murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, arson, and vehicular theft. These are crimes that have been reported, lesser misdemeanors are not reported. Additionally if an offender has multiple charges, only the most serious will be counted. Many lesser crimes go unreported. Only 20% of these reported crimes are cleared/solved each year. Another survey is the National Crime Victimization Survey, conducted by the Bureau of the Census, which is a survey of apporximately 94,000 people per year. They also include type 1 crimes, however there are discrepencies between the UCR and the NCVS as many crimes go unreported to the police, therefore causing a higher amount of response to the Victim Survey. One final note is that a higher crime rate isn't a bad thing. It can mean that more people are reporting crime that otherwise would go unreported, newer technology available to the police enables them to catch more criminals, and that the efficiency as a whole is increasing in law enforcement..
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