The Nation : Personal Crime Rate Falls

The number of crimes committed against individuals and households in 1985 fell to the lowest level since the government began collecting the information 13 years ago, the Justice Department said. A nationwide survey by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on interviews of more than 100,000 people in 49,000 homes, concluded that 34.9 million crimes occurred in 1985, down about 700,000, or 1.9%, from the previous year. In 1973, the first year of the survey, 35.6 million crimes were committed. The total number of crimes occurring annually has fallen 16% from the survey’s 1981 peak of 41.5 million.