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Crime
Crime rates convey a sense of an area's safety and security, and can in turn affect the feelings of citizens towards their community and their government, and influence business and residential development. After reaching a 36-year low, the crime rate is showing a slight increase. Still, Florida's overall crime rate remains low, down approximately 31 percent since 1998.
Why Is This Important?
Crime rates convey the incidence of serious crimes that are reported to law enforcement agencies. A high crime rate suggests an unsafe community and may deter public and/or private improvements or investment and degrade the residential desirability of an area.
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 in 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 Florida Doing?
When people think about crime, they tend to focus on violent crime or crime against persons. In fact, the vast majority of crime is property crime. Nationally, approximately 13 percent of crime is violent crime, and in Florida it is about 14 percent. In 2009, Florida saw crime take a significant drop in several areas. The overall crime rate declined by 6.4 percent, resulting in the lowest rate in 39 years. The overall number of violent crimes dropped by 6.2 percent. Murders decreased by 12.9 percent. Robbery, aggravated assult, burglary, larceny and vehicle theft all reported decreases in 2009.
Scorecard
What Influences Crime?
Crime rates are affected by many factors including the economy and job availability. In a declining economy, crime increases. Reduced earning power or unemployment may motivate theft crimes. Anger and/or depression from these circumstances may lead persons to commit criminal acts.
Crime rates reflect only those crimes reported and rise or fall depending on the volume of crimes reported. The rate may also be affected by differences in how local law enforcement agencies identify, target, and investigate crime. Trends in the availability of illegal narcotics affect crime. Drug addiction directly relates to increased property crimes. The "drug trade" itself involves many criminal offenses and leads to other criminal behavior.
Other forces such as natural disasters, emergencies, and state and federal public assistance policies, and education also influence crime rates.
What Is the State's Role?
While personal behavior has a major impact on crime, the state plays a role in identifying, investigating and responding to crime. The state's criminal justice mandate involves direct criminal apprehension and detention as well as the provision of criminal justice training, resources, and technical assistance. The state also coordinates the use of federal and state justice funding in Florida. Whereas the crime rate relates to offenses reported to law enforcement, clearly the state has major criminal justice responsibility in addition to recording and responding to crime reports, such as the protection of citizens from crime, crime prevention, prosecution of criminal cases and management of convicted offenders.
The state can make a significant impact on crime, and has done so over the past 10 to 15 years, through enforcement and legislation. For instance, the state passed the Stop Turning Out Prisoners (STOP) Law, which requires offenders to serve 85 percent of their sentences in prison. Prior to the law's passage, criminals were serving, on average, less than half of those sentences. Legislation called 10-20-Life imposed strict penalties for the use of firearms while committing a crime. Additionally, the Anti-Murder Act requires those on probation with prior violent offenses be returned to prison if they violate that probation, unless a judge rules otherwise.
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