MANY FACTORS CONTRIBUTE TO DECLINE IN CRIME

ALTHOUGH Republicans quite correctly point out that the nation's crime rate
is still well above its lowest rates, it is difficult not to be encouraged
by the news that serious crime in this country dropped 10 percent in the
first half of 1999.

The FBI released preliminary data from its national crime survey Sunday,
and even the experts were surprised.

"This is astounding," said James Alan Fox, professor of criminal justice at
Northeastern University and a frequent commentator on national crime
trends. "No one could have predicted the drops would have been this deep."

Carnegie Mellon University professor Alfred Blumstein called the decline
"enormous and encouraging."

What has gotten the experts' attention is the size of the decline -- much
larger than the customary 3-5 percent in previous half-years -- and the
fact that the decline involves drops of 13 percent in murders, 14 percent
in burglaries, 12 percent in auto thefts, 8 percent in rapes, 10 percent in
robberies and 7 percent in aggravated assault. Larceny-theft, another high
profile crime, dropped by 8 percent.

The national crime rate has been declining now for more than seven years,
and it looks like that decline will hold for 1999 as well.

Since virtually all Americans are affected, one way or another, by serious
crime, the search for an explanation to account for the tremendous drop in
the rates of serious crime is no idle pursuit.

The economy may be the basic reason. In flush times, crimes against persons
tend to decline. A full stomach and a decent job are eloquent arguments
against the commission of crimes of any sort.

So are age and infirmity, and the baby boom generation is aging steadily.
Many criminologists have long felt that it was the baby boomers who were
driving the high crime rates of the Seventies and Eighties, and now the
criminally-inclined members of that generation are not as active as they
once were.

One reason this is so, say Republicans, is that many of them are in jail,
put there and kept there by tougher sentencing laws.

And the Clinton administration, not surprisingly, credits itself for
putting more police on the street and for working to strengthen the
nation's gun laws.

Recent national data also seem to indicate that drug use among the young is
down, and drugs, particularly cocaine and crack, are frequently cited by
police in all jurisdictions as being the principal catalysts to increased
crime, particularly violent crime.

We suspect the figures are dropping because of some combination of all
these factors. But whatever the reason, the news is certainly welcome. It
is ironic, however, that while the nation's crime rate has declined for
most of this decade, spending on new jails and prisons has shot up again
and again. At a time when there is less and less crime, we are building
more and more prisons and spending more and more money on warehousing
inmates than ever before in the nation's history.

What is wrong with this picture? ---