Crime Reduction: Reality or Illusion

Report Outline
Criminal Activity in America
Past Efforts to Control Crime
Directions of Future Efforts
Special Focus

Criminal Activity in America

Perplexity Over Drop in Reported Crimes

The age-old problem of how to deal with crime continues to plague American society. With the last decade's “war on crime” declared a failure, old truisms such as rehabilitation, probation, parole and indeterminate sentencing are being reexamined and questioned. In searching for new ways to reduce the number of criminal acts committed in this country, criminologists and law-enforcement officials have entered an era of lowered expectations.

“Perhaps the most important thing we have learned in the last few years is that crime is not the kind of problem that is amenable to breakthrough—as in health, with the Salk vaccine, or the technology that put a man on the moon,” Gerald M. Caplan, ex-director of the National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice, has said. “It is a problem we will be picking away at for a long time to come, and with luck, there should be a little bit of progress here and a little bit there. Cumulatively it may add up to the kind of knowledge and programs that will have a major impact on our crime problem. That is our hope.”

Americans have grown so accustomed to hearing about rising crime that it came as a surprise in March when Attorney General Griffin B. Bell announced that the number of reported serious crimes across the country showed no increase in 1976 over 1975. This was the first time since 1972 that the nation's Crime Index, compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), did not rise. The 1976 figures were bolstered by new FBI figures released July 7, showing a 9 per cent decrease in crime in the United States for the first three months of 1977.