U.S. CRIME RATE ROSE 2% IN 2001 AFTER 10 YEARS OF DECREASES

For the first time since 1991, serious and violent crime in the United
States increased last year, the F.B.I. reported yesterday.

The bureau's annual Uniform Crime Report found that murder, the crime that
is best measured because it is least likely to go unreported, rose 2.5
percent nationwide over the figure for 2000. At the same time, robberies
climbed 3.7 percent, burglaries 2.9 percent, petty thefts 1.5 percent and
motor vehicle thefts 5.7 percent.

Rape also increased by 0.3 percent, the report said, while aggravated
assault dropped 0.5 percent. Figures for these two crimes are considered
the least reliable of the seven that go into the F.B.I.'s index because of
problems with reporting and measuring them.

Over all, crime rose 2.1 percent across the nation, the report said.
Experts and law enforcement officials said the overall increase, after a
decade of drops in the crime rate, appeared to reflect several factors: a
faltering economy, cuts in welfare and anticrime programs, as well as fewer
jobs available, more inmates returning home from prison, an increase in the
teenage population, and police resources diverted to antiterrorism efforts.

In addition, the experts said, after 10 years of decreases, in which the
crime rate dropped to its lowest level since the late 1960's, it would have
been hard for it to keep falling.

"We all knew that the marked downward trend of crime in the 90's could not
continue indefinitely," said Alfred Blumstein, a professor of statistics
and criminology at Carnegie Mellon University. "The crime rate really came
down very far, and one would have hoped it was an indication of
improvements in society, but that didn't happen. The economy is a big part
of the story."

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University,
said: "The great crime drop of the 1990's is over. It was wishful thinking
that it would continue forever. Crime is very resilient."

Regionally, there were sharp differences in overall crime last year. The
rate rose 3 percent in the West, 1.1 percent in the Midwest and 0.3 percent
in the South. In the Northeast, crime decreased 1.9 percent. And four
Eastern cities showed a drop in murders in 2001.

New York had the biggest decline, with 649 murders in 2001 compared with
673 in 2000, a decrease of 3.6 percent. Philadelphia had a decrease of 3.1
percent, Washington 2.9 percent and Baltimore 1.9 percent.

By contrast, in Las Vegas murders rose 48 percent in 2001, to 133 from 90
in 2000, while in Phoenix the number jumped 37.5 percent, to 209 from 152
in 2000. San Antonio recorded a 17.6 rise in murders last year, to 100 from
85 in 2000, and St. Louis rose 19.4 percent, to 148 from 124 in 2000.

In Phoenix, Detective Tony Morales, a police spokesman, said much of the
increase was caused by increased smuggling of drugs and illegal aliens on
the border with Mexico. Criminals have learned how to circumvent efforts by
federal law enforcement to crack down on illegal activity at the border, he
said, "so our crime rate is going back up."

"Narcotics is the No. 1 motive in our homicides," Detective Morales said.
"We have instituted new programs to combat narcotics, but the numbers have
started to creep back up anyway.

"Another thing that has tripled in the past few years is home invasion
robberies, mostly Hispanics on Hispanics, and people are reluctant to call
the police," Detective Morales continued. "So the real numbers are probably
much higher."

The F.B.I. report measures arrests reported by 17,000 local police agencies
around the nation to the bureau.

One striking increase was the 3.7 percent jump in robberies, the first
increase since 1991. Among the reasons was a sudden increase in bank
robberies in many parts of the country.

Over all, robberies caused losses estimated at $532 billion in 2001, the
report found. Bank robberies had the highest average loss, at $4,587 per
offense.

The homicide figures did not include the 3,047 deaths as a result of the
terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The F.B.I. published them in a
separate section. If they had been included in the regular total of
murders, they would have had a substantial impact on the homicide rate,
since there were a total of 15,980 other murders last year.

Criminologists have long tried to tease out the factors that caused the
crime drop of the 1990's, but cannot do so with great accuracy. In the same
way, it is next to impossible to quantify accurately the different
variables causing crime to start back up again.

One factor that can be measured, Professor Fox said, is that the number of
teenagers is now increasing 1 percent a year, after a decline in the
1990's. People in their late teens and early 20's are in the prime years
for committing crime, statistics show.