Current Surge of Lawlessness

Back in 1945 many persons in the United States were surprised that the total crimes reported to police rose to 1,566,000. But 35 years later the total reached 13,295,000​—and is still rising! This is a 750-percent increase, while the population grew about 60 percent! Rape increased over 600 percent! Violent crimes in general, nearly 900 percent! Imagine, in 1981 one out of every three households was touched by some form of crime! And this trend is not just in the United States. “The one thing that hits you in the eye when you look at crime on the world scale,” wrote a leading criminologist, Sir Leon Radzinowicz, in his book The Growth of Crime, “is a pervasive and persistent increase everywhere. Such exceptions as there are stand out in splendid isolation, and may soon be swamped in the rising tide.”

Are all these increases simply the better reporting of crimes to the police? For an answer, a team headed by Dr. Herbert Jacob of the Center for Urban Affairs Policy Research at Northwestern University analyzed the crime statistics, police expenditures and methods, arrest rates, and much other information from 396 cities in the United States during the period between 1948 and 1978. In an interview with a representative of this magazine, Dr. Jacob stated: “Reported crime rates have surged everywhere in the U.S. Part of this is undoubtedly a consequence of better police and civilian reporting of crimes. But this does not account for all the increase.”

“What is surprising,” continued Dr. Jacob, “is that in every kind of city​—in the north or south, declining or increasing in growth, with a large minority population or a small one—​the crime rose at approximately the same rate. It was a nationwide trend.” Can the police stop this ominous trend? “The police force has been generally ineffective because of several social forces beyond their control,” answered Dr. Jacob.

[Graph on page 6]

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total number of reported serious crimes in the United States increased over 1,000 percent from 1935 to 1980, while the population increased only about 78 percent during that same period!

1935 1,138,000

1950 2,220,000

1965 2,780,000

1980 13,295,000

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Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports of the total number of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts reported to police. Because of incomplete reports the 1935 and 1950 figures have been adjusted to represent total population