Legal Commentary

FBI Report: Violent Crime Down , Lots of Drug Arrests

By Jeralyn

The FBI has released its annual report, Crime in America. For the third year in a row, violent crime is down. This is the 7th year that property crimes have declined.

The 2009 statistics show that the estimated volumes of violent and property crimes declined 5.3 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively, when compared with the 2008 estimates. The violent crime rate for the year was 429.4 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants (a 6.1 percent decrease from the 2008 rate), and the property crime rate was 3,036.1 per 100,000 persons (a 5.5 percent decrease from the 2008 figure).

The full report is here. A summary is here. [More...]

Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter and robbery had the largest decreases (from 2008): 7.3 percent and 8.0 percent, respectively.

There sure were a lot of arrests: The FBI estimates agencies nationwide made about 13.7 million arrests, excluding traffic violations.

The most arrests were for drug offenses: 1.6 million:

The highest arrest counts among the Part I and Part II offenses were for drug abuse violations (estimated at 1,663,582 arrests), driving under the influence (estimated at 1,440,409), and larceny-theft (estimated at 1,334,933).

Of the drug arrests, 81% were for possession and 18% for manufacturing/distribution. Of the possession arrests, 45% were for marijuana.

75% of all arrestees were male, 69% were white and 28% were black.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 13, 2010 (boomark / email).