by Sarah Kershaw, New York Times
Serious crimes like homicide and robbery have risen in the United States for the first time in almost a decade, fueled by increases in many large cities but tempered by a sharp decline in New York City, according to statistics to be reported today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Crime increased in the nation by 2 percent over all in 2001, according to the federal report, which was released yesterday by New York officials trumpeting an eight-year decline in the state in most major crimes tracked annually by the F.B.I.
The nationwide increase comes after steady inroads against crime during the 1990’s, and when many local police departments are facing budgetary strains as they confront the new and complex demands of fighting terrorism along with routine crime.
The F.B.I. data are to be officially released today with more detailed statistics. They also show that in many categories, like homicide (up 3.1 percent) and car theft (up 5.9 percent), the incidence climbed dramatically during the second half of 2001, after declining in the first half.
While criminologists cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions about the country’s crime based on a one-year — or, in some cases, a six-month — change, there were substantial increases in all but a few of the seven crimes in the F.B.I. report.
The data, part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, are considered preliminary until the final statistics are issued in October and reflect the incidence of homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft reported to police nationwide.
With the exception of New York City, where violent crimes continued a sharp decline, almost 10 percent in 2001, homicides and other serious crimes surged last year in several cities. They included Boston, where homicides rose 67 percent last year, Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis and Phoenix, F.B.I. officials said yesterday.
Data on crime in cities outside New York were first reported yesterday in The Washington Post.
“Americans were getting along much better with each other during the 1990’s,” said Andrew Karmen, a professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “Many of the cities that enjoyed big drops in the 1990’s are now suffering from a rebound, with New York City being the big exception.”
While the F.B.I. data showed that crime had risen by 2 percent over all, violent crime increased only slightly, by 0.3 percent.
One kind of violent crime, aggravated assault, decreased in 2001, by 1.4 percent. In the other six categories, crime was up, and in most cases those increases reversed a downward trend from the previous six months.
Professor Karmen, the author of “New York Murder Mystery,” which discusses the plunge in crime in New York City during the 1990’s, said that the factors contributing to a decline in crime were as varied and hard to figure as the factors contributing to an increase.
But he suggested that the spike in crimes during the second six months of 2001 might have been fanned by anger over the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and the economic downturn that was gripping the country a year ago, at the start of the second half of 2001.
Professor Karmen said that the two categories of crime experts considered most reliable were homicide and car theft, because incident reporting is more accurate and more thorough than for the other categories.
While crime in those two categories rose substantially nationwide in 2001, New York City continued to show sharp decreases. Homicides, reflecting data reported earlier by New York City officials, decreased by 3.6 percent, while the incidence of car theft in the city was down by 16.3 percent, according to the federal data.
The New York City and New York State statistics did not include the deaths and injuries that resulted from the attack on the World Trade Center.