National Crime Rate Decreases
stltoday.com reports:
Despite the sagging economy, joblessness and a home foreclosure crisis, crime went down slightly in 2009 — nationally and in much of the St. Louis area — according to statistics compiled by the FBI and released Monday.
Across the U.S., violent crime fell 5.3 percent last year, and property crime fell 4.6 percent, the FBI said. Several St. Louis-area jurisdictions appear to have followed that trend.
The report tallies crimes reported by nearly 18,000 law enforcement agencies. It excludes most Illinois jurisdictions because that state's crime data collection is not compatible with other states.
The numbers have criminologists studying how recessions affect crime rates, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis and president of the American Society of Criminology. "It seems to be something of a surprise that there have been no increases during the current recession, when in past recessions, we've seen crime rates go up," he said.
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