On the Decline

At last the U.S. crime rate seems to be going down. The FBI announced last week that its preliminary 1972 figures on serious offenses showed a decline of 3%. It was the first decrease since the current system of gathering statistics was adopted in 1960.

Violent crime--murder, rape, aggravated assault--was still going up by 1%. The increase occurred principally in the West and the South, while there were declines in the Northeastern and North Central states. Nationwide, rape showed the greatest rise (11%), increasing mostly in suburban areas.

The overall decline was due to a decrease in the far larger number of property-oriented crimes: robbery, burglary, larceny and auto theft. There is some question as to whether police efforts have been as important to that trend as the increasing tendency to resort to such individual defensive tactics as private alarm systems and auto steering-wheel locks.

The crime total in actual numbers is not yet complete, though the FBI concluded that it had enough figures to make the percentage assessments. In any case, while the crime rate may be slightly down, it is still cruelly high. One measure of just how cruel it is showed up last week in a more limited survey taken by the Associated Press. In one week this March, the A.P. counted 350 U.S. gunshot fatalities. In previous surveys, three separate weeks in 1968 and 1969 had averaged about 200 such deaths each week--suggesting a 70% rise over four years. Perhaps, it was just a bad week.

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