NurseWeek

Washington (H24N). A comprehensive FBI study released Oct. 15 announced that the national crime rate continued a multi-year decline in 1999.

The study confirmed that for the eighth consecutive year, serious crimes declined: The year’s numbers were down 7 percent from 1998, and down a total of 20 percent from 1990. The report released by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program in the annual FBI publication Crime in the United States, 1999 discussed various aspects of crime and law enforcement.

The study encompasses 17,000 cities and communities that voluntarily report their crime statistics to FBI compilers.

The study produced the annual national crime clock that determines the frequency of crimes in the United States. Some data from the 1999 crime clock finds that:

One property crime occurs every three seconds
One violent crime occurs every 22 seconds
One aggravated assault occurs every 34 seconds
One forcible rape occurs every six minutes
One murder occurs every 34 minutes

The rates of crime in metropolitan areas and outlying metropolitan areas were virtually identical: 4,600 out of every 100,000 people were the victim of a crime in major metropolises, while 4,561 out of every 100,000 were victims in cities outside of metropolitan areas.

The study reported the lowest rate of violent crimes since 1978, with only 525 out of every 100,000 a victimized. The study also reported a total of 7,876 hate crimes in the United States. The majority of those were racially motivated.

Murder also showed a steep decline; there was a total of 15,533 murders in the United States: 50 percent of victims were white, 47 percent black. These numbers were down 28 percent from 1995 and were the lowest figure since 1966.

Rape was down 5 percent from the previous year, with only 64 out of every 100,000 women reporting a rape. The number of reported rapes also reached the lowest rate since 1985.

White men composed the majority of arrestees; 78 percent of all arrests were men, and 69 percent of all arrested were white.

President Clinton, after expressing excitement about the news, vowed that lawmakers "must do more to ensure that these downward trends continue."