.S. Murder Rate Falls to Lowest Level Since 1966

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. murder rate last year hit the lowest level since 1966 as the number of serious crimes committed nationwide fell for the eighth
year in a row, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Sunday.

In its 422-page report detailing final U.S. crime statistics for 1999, the FBI said the murder count stood at 15,533 last year, or one murder every 34 minutes.

The federal law enforcement agency calculated in its so-called crime clock that there was one robbery every minute, one rape every six minutes, and one burglary every
15 seconds.

President Clinton hailed the lower crime figures, saying they showed the longest period of decline ever recorded, after steadily rising crime rates through much of the
1980s.

“The overall crime rate is at a 26-year low, the murder rate is at a 33-year low and the violent crime rate is down to its lowest point in over two decades,” he said in a
statement released by the White House.

“We must do more to ensure that these downward trends continue,” he said, calling on the Republican-controlled Congress to reauthorize a program to hire more
community police officers and to adopt gun control legislation.

Reacting to the historic crime rate decline, Attorney General Janet Reno warned against complacency. “We cannot rest. We must build on the progress we have made
in reducing crime,” she said.

Various Theories For Falling Crime Rates

The report gave no explanation for why the crime numbers keep falling. Experts do not know for sure, but they have offered a variety of theories to explain the declines.

They have cited better police strategies and more officers on the street, the booming economy, the record U.S. prison population of nearly 2 million inmates, and the
aging of the baby-boom generation past their prime crime-committing years.

The FBI said the U.S. murder totals declined 8 percent last year from the 1998 number, and that it has fallen steadily each year from 24,530 slayings in 1993.

The rate worked out to six murders for every 100,000 U.S. inhabitants, the lowest level since 1966 when there were 5.7 murders for every 100,000 people.

The FBI said assailants used firearms in seven out of every 10 murders last year, an increase from six out of every 10 murders in 1998.

It said 88 percent of the murder victims last year were 18 or older, and 76 percent were male. Fifty percent of the victims were white, 47 percent were black and the
rest belonged to other races.

The victims knew their killers in about half of the incidents. The assailants were husbands or boyfriends in about a third of all murders of females.

The FBI said 30 percent of the murders resulted from arguments and 17 percent from criminal acts, such as a robbery.

Even with fewer slayings, murder still captured national interest, partly due to news media attention to high-profile incidents such as school shootings and political
attention to reform of the gun laws, the report said.

The FBI reported nearly 7,900 hate crime incidents last year. Nearly 4,300 of the hate crimes were motivated by racial bias, 1,400 by religious bias, 1,300 by sexual
orientation bias, nearly 830 by ethnic bias and 19 by disability bias.

There were 14 million arrests for all criminal offenses in 1999, excluding traffic violations. Violations for drug abuse and driving under the influence accounted for the
most arrests — more than 1.5 million each.

The report stemmed from information from 17,000 city, county and state law enforcement agencies.