According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Report released on September 10, violent crime in the United States decreased slightly in 2005, continuing a decade-long trend in fewer victimizations. Comparing two-year periods, violent crime was lowest in the Northeast region of the country in 2004-05, and that region also experienced the largest decrease in violent crime from 2002-03 to 2004-05. Since 1993, violent crime has decreased by about 58% in the U.S.

The BJS survey of crime victimization does not include homicides. However, the report did cite figures from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2004 and preliminary numbers for 2005. In that survey, the national murder rate decreased by 2.4% in 2004, but increased by 4.8% in 2005. Blacks and whites were about equally represented among victims of homicide.
(Criminal Victimization, 2005, Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2006). See Deterrence. In death penalty cases, about 80% of the victims in the underlying murder have been white, despite the fact that generally blacks and whites are about equal in terms of the number of murder victims.

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