Civil Rights
Block on Trump's Asylum Ban Upheld by Supreme Court
An Unexpected Result?
Here's something to break up the apparent string of bad news seeming to flow forth from the Blotter. The FBI says that both property and violent crime is down across the country for 2008. This marks the second year in a row of dropping crime rates, to boot.
The findings are from the FBI's Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report which tracks statistics submitted voluntarily by law enforcement agencies across the nation. An FBI story provided the following highlights:
So what does it all mean? Well, the FBI says it "doesn't interpret the data; we leave the number-crunching and in-depth analysis to criminologists, state and local law enforcement agencies, and other experts." In other words, it's probably best to take the data with a grain of salt and not to draw too many conclusions. Of particular surprise may be the numbers showing a drop in thefts and vehicle thefts, particularly in light of prior reports and suggestions that fraud and theft crimes tend to rise in recessions.