Federal researchers found a slight uptick in violent crime rates across the U.S. in the first half of 2015.
The FBI reports uptick in homicides and other violent crimes for 2015 from a year prior. The report, which was released yesterday, revealed that the rise occurred just in the first half of the year, when robberies, killings, rapes and other violent crimes spiked compared to the first half of 2014.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that 2015 violent crime rate rose 1.7 percent, despite a downward trend noticed two years earlier. Nevertheless, the public didn’t require an official report to notice that murder rates went up in many cities across the nation. It was enough to follow media reports to understand the situation.
The FBI based its report on data provided by 12,000 police departments and other law enforcement divisions, but the figures are preliminary.
The official report revealed that the number of homicides rose 6.2 percent on average, but a big increase was noticed in areas inhabited by fewer than 10,000 people. There, homicide rates spiked 17 percent from a year prior. In areas with less than 1 million residents homicide rates rose 12.4 percent, while in more crowded places (over 1 million people) homicides were up just 10.8 percent.
Since places with fewer than 10,000 people make up 9 percent of the nation’s population, 70 percent of local law enforcement agencies serve in those regions
The report also found that while in the rest of the nation violent crime rates saw an increase, in Northeast the rates went down by 3.2 percent. The most violent regions, however, were in the West with a rise of 5.6 percent.
Rapes also surged as the federal agency expanded the definition of rape to include other less blatant sexual attacks. Property crimes, however, remained steady, with a single exception – car thefts.
For 2014, official reports have shown a drop in violent crime rate, while the recent report shows that murders and gun killing were on the rise in 2015 in many major cities. Since federal experts do not know what may have triggered the phenomenon, they counseled patience.
Still, violent crime rates in the U.S. have fallen dramatically since the 1990s from 80 cases per 1,000 residents in 1993 to 20 cases per 1,000 residents in 2014. So, the situation observed in 2015 was relatively uncommon.
Federal experts, however, explained that an uptick in violent crime rate during one year doesn’t necessary mean that a new trend has just started.
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