Aggressive Crimes

Abstract

The lack of adequate statistical compilations in the United States makes it very difficult to assess trends in aggressive crime or other types of criminal offenses. An ex amination of the Uniform Crime Report data for the past seventeen years indicates much lower increases in aggressive crime rates than in property-crime rates. At the same time there was no increase in the murder rates. California statistical data show similar differences between the crimes of personal violence and property crimes, the former ris ing at a much slower rate than the latter. The fact that there is no breakdown of general-offense groupings which will disclose the degrees of seriousness within the offenses reported is a grave handicap toward assessing the real crime situation. It is suggested that a good part of the rise in crime rates may be the result of the increased reporting of offenses at the lower end of the serious scale in all types of criminal offenses. The fact that murder rates had not increased further supports this hypothesis. Until there is developed a complete information system of criminal justice within each state which will ac curately account for and describe offenses, offenders, each step in the process of the administration of justice, and the areas of correctional treatment, there will never be available the needed basis for determining with any degree of exactness what are the real trends in the various kinds of criminal offenses.