For 30 years the violent crime rate for the U.S. has risen. From about
1991-92, just a ten year span, it returned to levels in 1960.

30 years up, 10 years down.

This year's report for the past year shows an uptic of 3.7 percent.
Compared to the preceding ten year period, where year by year
reductions in rate of violent crime were was much as 20 percent per
year, that is a rather dramatic drop.

The relation to spanking by American parents?

Whose to say, but Straus notes that while nearly all toddlers are still
being spanked, the length of time spanking continues as they age has
dropped dramatically, and spanking of older children has dropped
preciptiously.

Put this together with the fact that we have had a large influx of
immigrants whose child rearing culture uses a lot of CP, and more harsh
CP at that, this drop in violent crime is remarkable.

Why the uptic this past year?

According to the claims, there are a number of possible reasons. One of
the biggest and most credible I see in my state and others, is a severe
cutback in the size of the police force.

Less police, more crime.

I predict that for a time we will see an increase in violent crime. But
not because we are spanking more or less, but because we aren't going
to improvement until police forces are back up to strength, and for a
time, as they grow, we'll see the arrest rate increase dramatically.

This is the report from last year:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/10/17/crime.rate/index.html

FBI: Violent crime rate declines again

From Terry Frieden
CNN
Monday, October 17, 2005; Posted: 11:25 a.m. EDT (15:25 GMT)
Source: FBI
United States

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. violent crime rate declined 2.2 percent
last year, continuing a decade-long downward trend in serious offenses,
the FBI said Monday.

All major categories of violent crime in the United States declined in
2004, bringing the rates of the most serious offenses, including
murders, rapes, robberies and assaults, to a level 32 percent lower
than those reported in 1995, the new figures show.

The rate of property crimes -- such as burglary, larceny and auto theft
-- declined 2.1 percent as well last year.

The only category of violent crime in which the number of incidents
rose was forcible rapes -- to 94,635 in 2004 from 93,883 in 2003, an
increase of 0.8 percent. But accounting for an increase in population,
the rate of forcible rapes dropped 0.2 percent.

The 523-page FBI Uniform Crime Report is the final compilation and
statistical analysis of crime data reported by nearly all state and
local law enforcement agencies for 2004.

The annual report offers no reasons for the trends, but the exhaustive
statistical data provides criminologists and academics with raw
material to examine.

Experts have attributed declines in recent years to a variety of
factors, including an aging population and harsher punishments such as
mandatory sentences.

In 2004, the number of violent crimes dropped 1.2 percent to 1,367,009
from 1,383,676 in 2003.

One murder occurred in the United States every 32.6 minutes, and the
murder rate dropped 3.3 percent to 5.5 per 100,000 people (16,137
offenses).The number of murder cases was down by nearly 400 from the
previous year.

The report said the number of murder victims and the total of suspects
were both nearly equally divided by race. Most suspects were adult men
using firearms, and about one in five murder victims was female.

Last year there were 401,326 robberies, down about 13,000 from 2003,
and the robbery rate dropped 4.1 percent to 136.7 per 100,000 people.

Arrests were made in 62 percent of murder cases, 55 percent of
aggravated assault cases, 42 percent of rape cases and 26 percent of
robbery cases, according to the report.
Almost 7,700 hate crimes

The FBI calculated 7,649 hate crimes -- cases in which offenders were
motivated by bias. Of those cases, 53 percent of cases were based on
race, 16 percent on religion, 15 percent on sexual orientation and 13
percent were based on ethnicity. Because of changes in reporting
procedures, the FBI provided no statistical comparison to the previous
year.

Of single-bias incidents, the most -- 2,731 -- were described as
anti-black, while 954 other cases were labeled anti-Jewish.

Of the anti-homosexual cases, 738 were committed against men and 164
were against women.

The FBI report also contained two special reports that examine juvenile
drug violations and crimes against infants.

The drug abuse report said the number of juveniles arrested increased
over a 10-year period, from 159,000 in 1994 to 195,000 in 2003.

"Trends for overall arrests involving drug abuse suggest that this
social problem shows no signs of abating," the report said.

In 2003, the last year for which juvenile arrest data was available,
nearly 163,000 juveniles were arrested for possession -- 127,000 of
those arrests involved marijuana, and 14,000 involved cocaine or opium.
Nearly 32,000 juveniles were arrested for the sale or manufacture of
drugs, the report found.

In what the FBI terms an "exploratory study," a review of data
involving infant victims shows that between 2001 and 2003, there were
94 cases of murder including non-negligent manslaughter of infants
under 1 year of age. Most of the offenses involved assaults -- 1,023
aggravated assaults and 1,404 simple assaults.

There were also 215 kidnappings and 39 rapes.

Most of the incidents involved relatives or someone the family trusted.
The report said an infant is rarely the only victim but reliable
information is difficult to collect.

"When incidents occur in private and the witnesses to such crimes
either cannot speak for themselves or may be reluctant to speak because
of a sense of loyalty to friends and family, it can be difficult for
law enforcement to ascertain sufficient information during an
investigation to have a case accepted for prosecution," the report
concluded....

And for the ten prior years violent crime was down each year.

Kane