The Nation : Crime Dips to 12-Year Low

Crime fell 4.1% to 35.5 million incidents in 1984, the lowest level in the 12-year history of the National Crime Survey of randomly selected American households, the government said. The number of violent crimes excluding murder and manslaughter, however, rose 0.9%, from 5,903,000 in 1983 to 5,954,000 in 1984. Those incidents include assaults, armed robbery and rape. The rape victimization rate for females, for instance, was 1.6 cases per 1,000 women, contrasted with 1.3 per 1,000 in the preceding year. The newest report on crime in America, issued by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, was a victimization survey, in which a random sample of people are asked if they have been victims of crime. Such surveys include crimes that have not been reported to police, and therefore are considered more comprehensive than FBI statistics.