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The accuracy of crime statistics
Starting with the year 1964, the total crime rate has gone up 350% in the United States of America, with more than 20 million reported crimes in the year 1999. Many of these criminals are what we call homegrown terrorists and predators, which roam the streets under probation, or even free, defended by fierce lawyers. We can only guess why people that are known to have a criminal record can be as free as any other person can, but the real culprits here are the lawyers, who do not care of their clients' culpability, but only of their winning strike.
However, criminal records do exists. The FBI saves all of these crime rates and crime statistics. Such figures register an average of crimes committed on a yearly basis, across the nation.
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The crime clock available online gives visitors an idea of how high the crime rate is in the United States of America. A crime clock is the aggregate representation of Uniform Crime Reporting data and it conveys the annual reported crime rate by showing a relative frequency of occurrence of offences. For example, in 2004, at every 23.1 seconds there was a violent crime, at every 32.6 minutes there was one murder, at every 5.6 minutes a forcible rape, at every 1.3 minutes there was one robbery and at 36.9 seconds, an aggravated assault. The numbers are troublesome for anybody who reads them, because most people are unaware of the county's real situation.
There is a continuous struggle to lower the crime statistics and for this reason, people have founded groups that act on the benefit of entire neighborhoods. These groups are the so-called Neighborhood Watches. These groups patrol the neighborhoods at night, making sure everything is in order. They check the properties where they know that the owners are not home, they make sure that there are lights on all the streets and that all the alarms are working.
The crime clock, which shows the annual ratio of crimes to fixed time intervals, sums up various crime statistics very close to reality. In essence, crime statistics make an illustration of the danger that any citizen of the USA is in at all times.
The crime clock 2006 shows that a violent crime takes place every 22.7 hours, a rape every five days, a theft every 2.4 hours, one arson every 14.6 days, one car theft every 32 hours and one property crime every 1.9 hours. What this actually shows is that the crime rate keeps increasing every year and if people do not take measures it will become more than alarming soon. Some of the most usual victims of crime are children, which are defenseless, and could get involved in drugs, violent bands, alcohol and other more serious offences. Most of them do not realize the danger they are getting into because they do not have proper education on how to act around grown-ups who can harm them, and they are unaware of the dangers.
Today, with the invention of the Internet vast means of communication, it is rather common for children to place themselves in dangerous situations, mostly because of their naivety and of their parents' lack of supervision. It is very easy for young girls to be attracted into dating strange men or even young boys. The world today is a very dangerous place for anybody who is not aware of the real situation of the crime rates. We could do plenty of things for our protection, but one of the first steps is to start educating yourself and your family on how to stay safe.
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