Welcome to Crime USA, the first web site totally dedicated to the study of crime as an individual and social phenomenon. By studying and documenting crime statistics in American society including the frequency and types of violations of the law, we hope to offer an insight into the criminal mind and the society that fosters it.


Approximately 13 million people are victims of crime every year in the United States, and of that 2 million are victims of violent crimes.

In 2005 the total spent by law enforcement in the USA for Police, Judicial and Corrections Departments exceeded 200 hundred million dollars and their were over 7 million people under correctional jurisdiction. 

There are many theoretical perspectives used in the study of criminology to explain how an individual with the inherent ability to choose between right and wrong will sometimes choose an illegitimate and illegal path over a more righteous and legal course. 

Some people are able to flourish under the rules and laws of society by maintaining high moral and ethical values, but criminals tend to rationalize or justify the consequences of illegal activity with a belief that the benefits outweigh the probability of apprehension, conviction or punishment. 

Some argue that if you increase the likelihood of being caught and that swift and proportionate punishment is assured, then crime will decrease. Others will say that mainstream culture in the United States is so saturated by the need to succeed that engaging in criminal activity has become the easiest way to realize ones dreams regardless of the risks. 

The goals of sociology are to better understand society and its influence on human behavior. Why do people act the way they do and what common values do they hold. Sane people will make choices based upon what they feel is morally and ethically acceptable to society. Insane people do not. 

So are all criminals insane, or has the moral fabric of American society degraded to the point that it is now ethically and socially acceptable to be a criminal? If society begins to tolerate certain behaviors and actions which are deemed to be against the law, should the offenders still be incarcerated or do we simply ignore or loosen the rules that we have created?



VIOLENT CRIME STATISTICS for the UNITED STATES

In 1929, the FBI created the Crime Reporting program (UCR). Around 1982 the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the FBI decided to team up and together sponsor a five year study, so that they can revise the UCR program to better suit the needs of law enforcement agencies in the 21st century.

What the UCR program does is collect information from law enforcement agencies about violent crimes. Basically what kind of crime, how the crime was committed, and to whom the crime was committed upon. Currently the UCR program is being expanded to NIBRS, or otherwise known as, Nation Incident-Based Reporting System. What they do is collect more comprehensive and detailed crime statistics. Using this summary system, law enforcement officials report the number of incidents monthly by offense type. The main objective of this program is to improve the quality of crime statistics in the United States. The FBI is using this program as a analytic crime fighting tool.

According to the UCR program, violent crime in the US is made up of four offense's: Murder and non negligent murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. The program's definition of a violent crime involves, force or threat of force. Nationwide , the estimated violent crimes that were committed in 2007 was 1,408,337. When this data was compared with 2006 data, there was a 7% decline in violent crime. The data for 2008 is currently not available yet since we still have a few more months left in the year.

In metropolitan areas the violent crime rate was 504 inhabitants for every 100,000. the murder rate in this area was 6.1 per every 100,000 inhabitants, while properties crime rates in these areas was 3.416.5 per 100,000. In cities outside of the metropolitan areas the violent crime rate was 395 per every 100,000 inhabitants, the murder rate was 3.7 per every 100,000, and the properties crime rate was 3,773.5 per 100,000. In non metropolitan counties the violent crime rate was, 209.3 per 100,000, the murder rate was 3.1 per 100,000, and the properties crime rate was 1,667.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.

The highest number of violent crimes consisted of aggravated assault at 60.8%, robbery accounted for 31.6%, forcible rape had 6.4%, and murder had the lowest coming in at 1.2%, which still doesn't make you feel any better about it. According to these estimates, there was a 2.5% decrease in forcible rape, 1.3% decrease in murder, 1.4% decrease in property crimes, and 8.1% decrease in motor vehicle theft. Altogether violent crimes decreased about 7% from 2006 to 2007. Firearms accounted for 68% of the nations murders, 42.8% of robberies, and 21.4% of aggravated assault.

These statistics also show that teens and young adults experienced the highest rate of violent crime, while people in the older age group experienced lower rates of violent crime. The UCR shows that 87% of murder victims were age 18 and older, while 44% of murder victims were between the ages of 23-34. Property crime, not violence proved to be the highest percent for those 65 and older. Males experienced a higher victimization for all types of violent crimes except rape and sexual assault.

What is most surprising is that those whose income is less then $7,500, had a robbery rate of 7 per 1,000 households and had a aggravated assault rate of 13 per 1,000 households. While those who earned more then $75,000 only had a robbery rate of 2 per 1,000 and a aggravated assault rate of 3per 1,000 households. You would think that those who earned more money would have a higher robbery rate since they could afford to buy more expensive items. Perhaps they can just afford a Security Camera System.

According to this data, divorced or separated people experienced higher rates of overall violence compared to people of other marital categories. But people who were married or widowed experienced rape and sexual assault equally to those who are divorced or separated. The robbery rates for married couples was 1 per 1,000 households and for non-married people the rate is 6 per 1,000 households. The simple assault rates for married people is 7 per 1,000; for non married is 25 per 1,000; for widowed is 1 per 1,000; and for divorced or separated is 32 per 1,000 households. African Americans experienced 186 per 1,000 households of property crime verses 157 per 1.000 Caucasian households. Burglaries were experienced by 42 per 1,000 African American households. Caucasians experienced 29 per1,000 burglaries. Hispanics properties crime rate was 212 per 1,000 households and all other ethnicities was 155 per 1,000 households.