THE ECOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST FACULTY OF LAW AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

CRIME IN THE USA

STUDENT: SAMOIL GEORGIAN UNIVERSITY YEAR: 2010-2011 2nd YEAR OF STUDY

REGIONAL CENTRE VLENI

Contents
1. CRIME OVER TIME.. pag.3 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF OFFENDERS. pag.4 3. CRIME VICTIMOLOGY.. pag.4 3.1. Crimes against the homeless... pag.5 3.2. Homicide... pag.5 3.3. Violent crime....... pag. 6 4. BIBLIOGRAPHY... pag. 7

1. CRIME OVER TIME

Crime statistics for the United States are published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the Uniform Crime Reports which represents crimes reported to the police. The Bureau of Justice Statistics conducts the annual National Crime Victimization Survey which captures crimes not reported to the police. The crime rate is measured by the number of offenses being reported per 100,000 people. It is quite common for crime in American cities to be highly concentrated in a few, often economically disadvantaged areas. For example, San Mateo County, California had a population of approximately 707,000 and 17 homicides in 2001. 6 of these 17 homicides took place in poor, largely Black and Hispanic East Palo Alto, which had a population of roughly 30,000. So, while East Palo Alto accounted for a mere 4.2% of the population, about one-third of the homicides took place there.1 According to the FBI, in 2008 14,180 people were murdered in America.2 Over the past thirty years, the crime rate rose throughout the 1980s, reached its peak in 1993 and then began to decrease throughout the 1990s and 2000s. One hypothesis suggests there is a causal link between legalized abortion and this drop.3 Another suggests reduced lead exposure as the cause; Scholar Mark A.R. Kleiman writes: "Given the decrease in lead exposure among children since the 1980s and the estimated effects of lead on crime, reduced lead exposure could easily explain a very large proportioncertainly more than halfof the crime decrease of the 1994-2004 period. Recently, however, the homicide rate has stagnated.4 While the homicide rate decreased continuously between 1991 and 2000 from 9.8 homicides per 100,000 persons to 5.5 per 100,000, it has remained level through 2005.

Crime in San Mateo County in 2001, US Bureau of Justice Statistics". http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeOneYearofData.cfm. 2 http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/homicide.html
3 4

Crime in the US, 1990-2009, FBI". http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_01.html. Crime in the US, 1986-2005, FBI". http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html.

Despite the recent stagnation of the homicide rate, however, property and violent crimes overall have continued to decrease, though at a considerably slower pace than in the 1990s.5 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF OFFENDERS According to the latest "Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police," a 2008 Bureau of Justice Statistics Report, hate crime offenders were predominantly white (61%), whereas the victims were predominantly black (72.9%) and targeted because of their race (51%). Among religious hate crimes, the majority of victims were of Jewish faith (65.7%) with less than one in ten offenses aimed at people of the Muslim faith (7.7%).6 Among crimes aimed at ethnicity and national background, the majority of hate crimes were of anti-Hispanic bias (64%). 3. CRIME VICTIMOLOGY Patterns are found within the victimology of crime in the United States. Overall, the financially disadvantaged, females, those younger than 25 and non Whites were more likely to fall victim to crime. Income, sex and age had the most dramatic effect on the chances of a person being victimized by crime, while the characteristic of race depended upon the crime being committed. Sexual assault and rape rates were roughly the same for all races. Whites and African Americans also had approximately the same chances of falling victim to simple assaults. In terms of gender, males were more likely to become crime victims than were females, with 79% percent of all murder victims being male. Males were also twice as likely to be carjacked as were females. Concerning age, those younger than twenty-five were more likely to fall victim to crime, especially violent crime. The chances of being victimized by violent crime decreased far more substantially with age than the chances of becoming the victim of property crime. For example, 3.03% of crimes committed against a young person were theft, while 20% of crimes committed against an elderly person were theft. Thus, one can conclude that the probability of becoming a violent crime victim decreases as income and age increase, in addition to being lower for European Americans and females.7
5 6

Crime in the US, 1986-2005, FBI". http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_43.html 7 http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P7742.pdf

3.1. Crimes against the homeless In recent years, largely due to the efforts of the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) and academic researchers the problem of violence against the homeless has gained national attention. The NCH called deliberate attacks against the homeless hate crimes in their report Hate, Violence, and Death on Mainstreet USA (they retain the definition of the American Congress). The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino in conjunction with the NCH found that 155 homeless people were killed by non-homeless people in "hate killings", while 76 people were killed in all the other traditional hate crime homicide categories such as race and religion, combined.8 The CSHE contends that negative and degrading portrayals of the homeless contribute to a climate where violence takes place. 3.2. Homicide In the United States, the number of homicides where the victim and offender relationship was undetermined has been increasing since 1999 but has not reached the levels experienced in the early 1990s. In 14% of all murders, the victim and the offender were strangers. Spouses and family members made up about 15% of all victims, about one-third of the victims were acquaintances of the assailant, and the victim and offender relationship was undetermined in over one-third of homicides. Gun involvement in homicides were gang related homicides which increased after 1980, homicides that occurred during the commission of a felony which increased from 55% in 1985 to 77% in 2005, homicides resulting from arguments which declined to the lowest levels recorded recently, and homicides resulting from other circumstances which remained relatively constant. Because gang killing has become a normal part of inner cities, many including police, hold preconceptions about the causes of death in inner cities. When a death is labeled gang related it lowers the chances that it will be investigated and increases the chances that the perpetrator will remain at large. In addition, victims of gang killings often determine the priority a case will be given by police. Jenkins (1988) argues that many serial

National Coalition for the Homeless, Hate, "Violence, and Death on Main Street USA: A report on Hate Crimes and Violence Against People Experiencing Homelessness, 2006", February 2007.

murder cases remain unknown to police and that cases involving Black offenders and victims are especially likely to escape official attention.9 3.3. Violent crime The reported US violent crime rate includes only Aggravated Assault, whereas the Canadian violent crime rate includes all categories of assault, including the much-more-numerous Assault level 1 (i.e., assault not using a weapon and not resulting in serious bodily harm). A government study concluded that direct comparison of the 2 countries' violent crime totals or rates was "inappropriate".10

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Jenkins, P. (1988). Myth and murder: the serial killer panic of 1983-1985, Criminal Justice Research Bulletin. 3(11) 1-7. 2. Feasibility Study on Crime Comparisons Between Canada and the United States Maire Gannon, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada, Cat. no. 85F0035XIE, Accessed June 28, 2009
9

Jenkins, P. (1988). Myth and murder: the serial killer panic of 1983-1985, Criminal Justice Research Bulletin. 3(11) 1-7. 10 Feasibility Study on Crime Comparisons Between Canada and the United States Maire Gannon, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Statistics Canada, Cat. no. 85F0035XIE, Accessed June 28, 2009

3. National Coalition for the Homeless, Hate, "Violence, and Death on Main Street USA: A report on Hate Crimes and Violence Against People Experiencing Homelessness, 2006", February 2007. Crime in the US, 1990-2009, FBI". http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_01.html. Crime in San Mateo County in 2001, US Bureau of Justice Statistics". Crime in the US, 1986-2005, FBI". http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_01.html. http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/Local/RunCrimeOneYearofData.cfm. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/homicide.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_43.html http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/2008/P7742.pdf