Crime threatens American families today! Increasing street gangs, exploding juvenile delinquency, blight of illegal drugs, haphazard sale of firearms and fewer police on the beat has kept up the rate of violent crimes for a second time in a row in the United States.
According to FBI data, the violent crime rate was 473.5 cases for every 100,000 inhabitants in 2006.
Last year there were 1.42 million violent crimes in the United States, a considerable increase from the 1.36 million in 2004. Homicides increased 1.8%, to 17,034. Drug abuse violations in 2006, an estimated 1.9 million arrests or about 13 percent of the total number of arrests , than for any other offenses.
The violent crime rate (measured as incidents per 100,000 people) peaked in the early 1990s, then steadily declined until 2005. For the last two years violent crime has been on the rise.
Homicides, rapes, robberies, aggravated assault all form part of the violent crime incidents that have just been rising here. It is not only the police but also society as a whole that needs to be vigilant against crime. The alarming “crime clock” put together by the FBI states that a house is robbed every 14 seconds and a vehicle stolen every 26 seconds.
While some might want to blame the crimes on immigrants, one needs to consider the social fabric of a country where gun culture is rampant even amongst schoolchildren. Safety of neighborhoods, children and women has become questionable. As it is, the US prison population remains the biggest in the world with 2.2 million inmates.
The so-called superpower of the world has much thrash to clear out in its own backyard. Why is crime back up there? While they might have set aside troops for war with Iraq, dwindling resources have brought much unrest back home. The value for life has become meaningless as more and more homicides take place for minor reasons, children themselves are raising children, race crimes are on the rise, juvenile delinquents are becoming hardened criminals. Some might want to blame it on the immigrants but I feel that the price of being a superpower seems rather high. What do you say?
