US violent crime rate down for fifth straight year
Although crime historically spikes during hard economic times, the US is currently bucking that trend. Both the national violent crime rate and murder rate were down in 2011, reports the FBI.
The Chicago skyline is seen from a helicopter on June 15.
Carolyn Kaster/AP
Atlanta
Often depicted as one of the more violent countries in the world, the United States has almost never been a safer place to live.
The FBI on Monday reported that violent crime dropped in the US for the fifth straight year, this time by 4 percent, a trend that has defied some criminologists’ thinking about the link between personal and property crimes in tough economic times.
According to the FBI, which culls from information volunteered by some 14,000 law enforcement jurisdictions from Oahu to Key West, violent crimes dropped in all four major US regions: 4.7 percent in the West, 4.9 percent in the Midwest (a region where the murder rate actually rose slightly), 4.5 percent in the South, and 0.8 percent in the Northeast. The national murder rate dropped by 1.9 percent.
In the property crimes categories, car thefts and larceny thefts decreased nationally, but burglaries ticked up slightly in all regions except the South, the FBI reported.
