Washington – The nation’s murder rate declined last year for the first time in four years, dropping to the lowest level in 40 years. Experts said local, rather than national, trends were mostly responsible.
The rates for all seven major crimes were down and the overall violent crime rate reached a 30-year low, according to the FBI’s annual compilation of crimes reported to the police.
There were 391 fewer murders nationwide in 2004 than the year before. The total of 16,137 worked out to 5.5 murders for every 100,000 people.
That’s 3.3 percent decline from 2003 and the lowest murder rate since 1965, when it was 5.1.
“The declines are relatively small compared to larger, steady drops in the 1990s, and the results are by no means the same across the country,” said professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University.
“We’re not seeing important national trends like the shrinking of crack markets in the 1990s,” Blumstein added. “These are responses to local situations, changes in local drug markets and shifts in gangs.”
Blumstein said Chicago, with a decline of 150 murders, and Washington, D.C., with a decline of 50, accounted for 51 percent of the net nationwide drop. St. Louis, on the other hand, saw an increase of 39 murders.
Of 19 large cities with more than 100 murders apiece in 2003, 13 had declines in 2004 while six recorded increases, Blumstein said.
“Most of these changes result from local conditions or random variation,” said professor James Alan Fox of Northeastern University in Boston.
The fastest-growing population segment is still people over age 50, who commit few violent crimes, so that should produce some decline in murder, but “it’s not a rosy picture all around the country,” he said.
“The best news is that there’s no national increase despite reasons – like economic conditions – why it could rise,” Fox added. Other reasons he cited were growing gang violence in some cities and local budget cuts.
