The Curse of Violent Crime

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But what is the reality that spawns the fear? Crime statistics have always been notoriously suspect. Many victims shun police, the courts or publicity and never report the violence or thievery they have encountered. While murders are almost always recorded, rape is understandably underreported. The FBI collects its Uniform Crime Reports from local police departments, which often have reason to juggle the figures. A proud chief may want his city to look under control, reflecting on the effectiveness of the force he commands. A bitter chief, angry at funding or manpower cuts, may blacken the statistics to apply pressure for more help. Recalls Patrick Murphy, president of the Police Foundation in Washington, D.C.: "When I was a rookie in the 72nd precinct in Brooklyn, no police commander worth his salt would admit he couldn't control crime—and he proved it by controlling crime statistics."

While the rate of increase in violent crimes (murder, forcible rape, aggravated assault and robbery) has varied through the 1970s, the trend in crimes per 100,000 people has been relentlessly upward. The FBI'S figures placed that rate in 1970 at 363.5; it was up to 535.5 in 1979, the last year in which the tabulation is complete. Of those four crimes, murder jumped to 9.7 per 100,000 in 1979. The record, set in 1974, was 9.8, but that figure, according to early estimates, apparently was passed last year. Roughly one-third of those killings were committed by someone the victim had never met-and it is the unknown marauder lurking in the shadows who contributes most to the climate of fear.

Some experts on crime argue that "victimization" studies, in which Justice Department researchers use scientific polling techniques to sample the population, are more reliable than the FBI's annual counts. The department's studies, in which people are asked to respond anonymously to their personal encounters with violence, show surprisingly little year-by-year overall variations in crime rates. The changes they do report, like a 13.7% increase in rape between 1973 and 1979, are hardly comforting. Notes Charles Kinderman, a researcher at the Bureau of Justice Statistics: "Our figures do not show a new crime wave-but they show there's a hell of a lot of crime." Predicts Harry Scarr, former director of the bureau: "Within four or five years every household in the country will be hit by crime."

Many local statistics support the widespread belief that violent crime is soaring. Figures for the first six months of 1980 showed that New York City probably had its worst year in history. Serious crimes ran some 60% above the national average, pushing it from fourth to second, behind St. Louis, in crimes per 100,000 people. New York topped the nation in its robbery rate and in 1980 had a record number of murders: 1,814. If the rate is unchanged, predicts an M.I.T. study, one out of every 61 babies born in the city last year can expect to die at the hands—or gun—of a killer.