Crime
Crime rates convey a sense of an area's safety and security, and can in turn affect the attitude of citizens about their community and government, and influence business and residential development.
Why is This Important?
Crime rates convey the incidence of serious crimes that are reported to law enforcement agencies. When rates are favorable or improving, citizens may feel more secure and may credit public safety organizations for the improvement, think more highly of government, and be more trusting of others. A low crime rate correlates with a secure area, may be attractive to business and residential development, and may lead to associated improvements in an area's tax base.
Citizen, business and governmental attention to changes in crime rates can spur action to secure the safety and protection of people and property, as well as to direct law enforcement resources and priorities.
How is Hampton Roads Doing?
The vast majority of serious crime is property crime rather than violent crime or crime against persons. The Hampton Roads violent and property crime rates in 2008 were 431 and 3,473 per 100,000 people. The violent crime rate has remained in the range of 429 to 477 since 2000, but the property crime rate has fallen from 3,996 in 2000. Virginia's violent crime rate was 256 and its property crime rate was 2,518 per 100,000 people in 2008, while the national average was 455 per 100,000 for violent crime and 3,212 per 100,000 for property crime.
What Influences Crime?
Generally, crime rates are influenced by economic conditions, employment availability and individual behavior. In an unfavorable or declining economy, crime typically increases. Poor earning power, unemployment, or frustration with the resulting deprivations may lead persons to commit criminal acts.
Trends in the availability of illegal narcotics affect crime. Drug addiction is directly related to increased property crimes. The "drug trade" itself involves many criminal offenses and propagates other criminal behavior.
Crime rates rise or fall depending on the volume of crimes reported. This may be affected by varying citizen behaviors in reporting or not reporting crimes and differences in police identification or targeting of crimes and resultant patrol or investigation behaviors.
Data Definitions and Sources
Data on crime totals and rates for Virginia's localities were prepared by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Research Center, 10/24/08. The Virginia statewide totals and rates represent the summation of locality data.
The Crime Rate is derived from the reporting on seven offenses identified by the FBI as serious crimes by nature and/or by volume: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson is also a property crime but is not included in the property crime analysis because of insufficient data. Index Crime Rates are counts of these serious offenses known to the police per 100,000 population.
Limitations of the Data
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The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) is a voluntary program in which participating law enforcement agencies report incidents of seven selected serious crimes. Estimates are used to reach a total where there is less than 100 percent reporting, and estimation methods have changed over time.
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Local agencies within a state and in separate states may classify reported crimes differently, causing comparability problems at the community level and state-to-state.
See the Data Sources and Updates Calendar for a detailed list of the data resources used for indicator measures on Hampton Roads Performs.
