Exploring Texas crime data

Having posted an initial reaction to press coverage of the new Uniform Crime Reporting data (which showed so-called "index crimes" declining by 3% overall in Texas), let's adumbrate a few more details from this new dataset out of the Department of Public Safety:

Despite declining crime last year and for most of the decade, according to the UCR, the number of adult Texans arrested increased by 2% in 2008, just as it increased in six of the last seven years. So Texas arrest trends appear disconnected from crime rates, to judge by these metrics. The number of juveniles arrested, by contrast, declined for the fourth year running.

Among countervailing trends to the overall downward tendency, reported arson offenses increased 6%; one wonders whether that's in any way related to the economic downturn as homeowners look to their insurance company for an easy way out of a difficult financial problem?

The value of stolen property recovered in 2008 was $552 million compared to $2 billion stolen.

One eye-catching statistic buried beneath the headlines: "There were 5,184 officers assaulted during 2008 compared to 4,396 in 2007. This represents an increase of 17.9 percent." That's an enormous increase! I wonder what explains it? An increase that large almost makes me wonder if somebody began reporting who wasn't doing so before or if some other technical glitch explains the numbers. Otherwise, that seems like an incredibly alarming trend. Nine Texas law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty in 2008, according to the report.

Law enforcement in 2008 began to prioritize drunkenness over drug possession, to judge by a chart on page 2: Arrests for the former increased 6.6% while arrests for the latter declined 4.1% and DWI arrests remained steady. In 2007, the number of arrests for drunkenness and drug possession were nearly equal, with 136,201 for drunkenness and 134,692 for drug possession, but in 2008, arrests for drunkenness topped 145,000 while those for drug possession declined below 130,000. It'll be interesting to see over the next few years if that trend continues.

Grabbing most of the MSM headlines, rates per 100,00 for murder, rape, and robbery declined 5.1%, 6.8%, and 4.3% respectively, while aggravated assaults rose 2.1%. But since aggravated assaults make up the majority of violent crimes - 76,487 out of 123,621 total - the overall number of violent crimes declined just 0.6%.

Some but not all of the increase in agg assaults can be explained by a 3.2% increase in the number of family violence victims; 14.9% of Texas' 208,071 family-violence offenses in 2008 were aggravated assaults, according to DPS. That puts the number of family-violence related agg assaults at around 31,000 out of 76,487, or 40.5% of the total and growing.

For property crimes the most eye popping reduction was motor vehicle thefts, which were stolen (at a rate per 100,000) 10.8% less frequently in 2008 than the year before. The number of arrests for vehicle theft also declined by more than 10%, says DPS, so the reason for the decline must be external, not because they caught more people.

Unfortunately, vehicles are the smallest category of property thefts, so the effect on the overall numbers was mitigated by a 0.9% increase in the total number of burglaries and just a 3% decline in the largest category, "larceny-theft" (about 2/3 of the total).

A 3% total reduction? Perhaps. But overall this data presents quite a mixed bag of good and bad news.