U.S. Crime Rates Over Time: A State and Regional Approach

Overall, property crime is more pervasive than violent crime. Larceny, also known as theft, was the most prevalent crime in 2019 with a rate of 1,549.5 per 100,000 people, followed by burglary (340.5) and motor vehicle theft (219.9). Assault was the most common violent crime: 250.2 instances per 100,000, trailed by robbery (81.6), rape (42.6), then homicide (5) (Gramlich, 2020). When looking at crime rates, is important to note that only 40.9% of violent crime rates and 32.5% of property crimes are reported, due to a mistrust in or fear of police, or familial relationships between victim and perpetrator. Young people with annual incomes less than $25,000 are much more likely to be victims of crimes, and offenders are more likely to be perceived as young Black men. Despite annual crime rates generally steadily declining over the past three decades, public perceptions about rising crime are surprisingly incorrect and overestimated, especially when asked about the national landscape versus one’s local community (Gramlich, 2020). Perceptions about crime severity on the national political agenda also tend to follow demographic characteristics, such as Republicans who tend to align with ‘tough on crime’ ideologies.
 
In order to zoom in further on crime trends in the United States, this report also analyzes homicide, violent crime, and property crime rates across four geographical regions: South, Northeast, West, and Midwest (U.S. Census Bureau, 1995). Since the 1960s, Southern states have consistently had the highest rates of homicide, whereas the Northeastern region has, for the most part, had the lowest rates. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the South peaked in 1974 at an average of 12.48 murders per 100,000, driven by high murder rates in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. High murder rates in the South throughout the 1970s, 80s, and 90s may be due to the rise of violence in the ‘crack epidemic,’ which hit Atlanta communities with particular intensity (Robinson & Simonton, 2019). Murder rates similarly peaked across the other three regions around 1974, but were not nearly as high (for example, in the West, average murder rate was about 8.29 per 100,000) (Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 2020). This peak in murder coincides with the Supreme Court Moratorium on capital punishment from 1972 to 1976. It is difficult to say whether this removal of the deterrence mechanism caused murder to peak, because murder was already on a linear upward trend since 1965 across most states, and murder actually slightly increased after the moratorium was removed in 1976 (FBI, 2020). Perhaps the homicide uptick after the ban was a display of the brutalization effect, which leads to additional lives lost due to public outrage over a lack of regard for human life by the government (Wooten, 2021). In contrast, the average murder rate in the Northeast has never surpassed 5.55. As murder rates across all regions have remained relatively stagnant since the mid 2000s, there was a slight uptick in homicide across all regions between 2014 and 2016 (FBI, 2020).

Now, I will turn to a state analysis of crime over time, particularly in Pennsylvania. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, violent crime rates were the highest in New York, Florida, and California. With regard to property crime rates during this time, Arizona, Texas, and Florida had notably high property crime. Throughout the 1990s —the height of the Crime Boom— Western states overall had the highest rates of property crime, whereas the Northeastern states had the lowest. In 2019, the state with the highest rate of property crime was Louisiana (3162 per 100,000) and Alaska had the highest violent crime rate (867 per 100,000). For comparison, the national averages for property and violent crime were 2,109.9 and 379.4 per 100,000, respectively (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2020). Native American Reservations experience violent crime rates at nearly 2.5x that of the national average, particularly against female victims, which could explain historically high rates of violent crime in Alaska, Nevada, and New Mexico (Bachman et al., 2008). In Pennsylvania, crime rates are consistently below the national and Northeastern regional averages (see Fig 2). From the 1960s to early 2000s, PA had very low property and violent crime below national rates, whereas crime hovered nearer to national rates from 2005 to 2013. Pennsylvania property crime specifically peaked in 1980, driven by particularly high rates of burglary and larceny (1,038.5 and 1915.5 per 100,000 respectively). Overall, all three property crimes have declined steadily since 1996 (FBI, 2020).