Crime and Punishment in the United States

The issues of crime and punishment are crucial to any society, and the United States is certainly no exception. From examining the crime statistics of the United States over the last thirty-five years, it appears that crime as a whole has declined significantly. In conjunction with this decline, the population of convicted criminals has risen dramatically, and the way that the criminal justice system deals with crime has changed in recent years, as well.

Property crimes, such as theft, burglary and motor vehicle theft have had the most dramatic decrease over the last thirty years. From the statistics provided by the U.S. Department of Justice, the rate of victimization of property crimes per 1000 households has gone from over 500 per 1000 in 1973 to under 200 per 1000 in 2005. It is also clear that violent crimes have also decreased dramatically over the last thirty-five years. The total amount of violent crime in the United States has decreased by over fifty percent from 1973 to 2005. This category of violent crimes includes murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated and simple assault. The number of violent crimes per 1000 members of the population during this period peaked in 1981, when it registered at 52.13. In 2005, there were 21 violent crimes victims for every 1000 of the population.

Along with crime, crime victimization statistics have changed dramatically in recent years as well. In previous years, as many as 125 young people out of 1000 were victims of violent crimes. The rate of violent crime victimization for the age groups of 12-15, 16-19, and 20-24 was below 50 per 1000 in the year 2005. This marks a dramatic decrease in victimization among these age groups, which have historically had the highest rates of victimization. The rates of victimization for older people have declined as well, but the percentage of the decrease is much less dramatic than that of the younger age groups. Even though crime victimization rates have dropped for all age groups, these younger age groups still have the highest rate of victimization.

This decrease in crime can be attributed in part to changes in the way that criminals are incarcerated. The Truth in Sentencing law, which has been implemented by a number of states since 1997, requires offenders to serve a larger portion of their sentence than they had previously. The purpose of this law is to establish uniform prison term guidelines. A U.S. Department of Justice report reveals that states with truth in sentencing laws required offenders to spend at least 85 percent of their sentence in prison. When examining the length of incarceration of states without the Truth in Sentencing laws, some interesting trends are revealed.

For instance, for all types of offenders in states without truth in sentencing laws, a sentence of 62 months resulted in only 30 months of actual time served. Violent offenders who had sentences of 85 months only served an average of 45 months. In both of these cases, the offenders are only serving approximately 50 percent of their sentence. Many of the states who have enacted these laws have done away with the parole board system that often resulted in prisoners being released well before they had served their terms.

The downside of these laws is that they have also raised the populations of our prisons. In the cases of violent offenders in 1996, those released by a parole board served an average of only 34 percent of their sentence. While this has certainly kept offenders behind bars longer, it has also increased the population of our state prisons. While the number of admissions to state prisons has increased by only 17 percent, the number of inmates has increased by 60 percent. This is due in large part to the truth in sentencing laws, which force offenders to stay in prison longer. While incarceration certainly keeps criminals off the streets, there is a long-standing debate as to whether it actually rehabilitates criminals or addresses the issues behind crime. Certainly social measures, such as drug and alcohol rehabilitation, educational and vocational programs need to be increased in order to address this problem.