FBI: It’s official, crime rates decreased last year

By Christen Smith

Some good news came out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation this week: crime decreased in 2017.
Violent crimes nationwide dropped .2 percent while property crimes fell 3 percent, according to the FBI’s Crime in the United States. Some 90 percent of the nearly 19,000 local agencies participating in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program submitted data for the agency’s statistical review.
According to the data, law enforcement documented 1.2 million violent crimes in 2017 — a 10 percent decline from a decade ago. The figure spiked nearly 7 percent higher in 2013, according to the FBI, increasing marginally until last year.
The estimated number of murders and “non-negligent manslaughter” offenses declined .7 percent while robbery dropped 4 percent. Aggravated assault and rape incidents, however, rose 1 percent and 2.5 percent, respectively.
In 2017, the agency discontinued the reporting of rape data using a “legacy definition,” six years after then-FBI Director Robert Mueller first approved a revamped version of the UCR’s 80-year-old classification of rape. The new definition — implemented into the FBI’s crime reporting systems in 2013 — reads: “Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another

Source: Guns.com