lack of evidence

Serious crimes reported to police declined for the sixth straight year in 1997, but the FBI’s annual report shows that property crime usually pays in America, although not very much.
    While television and movies regularly show culprits captured, the FBI’s annual crime re-port reveals a harsher truth: the overwhelming majority of robbers, burglars, larcenists and auto thieves are not caught.
    On the upside, the FBI reported Sunday that serious violent and property crimes reported to police dropped by 2. 4 percent last year to a total of 13. 2 million. The murder rate plunged by 8. 1 percent to its lowest level in 30 years.
    Murder, aggravated assault, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny-theft and auto theft all declined in number and in rate in every region of the country. But Attorney General Janet Reno cautioned that they still had not won the war on crime.
    The FBI also reported that police last year solved only 26 percent of the robberies, 20 percent of the larceny-thefts and 14 percent of the burglaries and auto thefts.
    Worse, Justice Department surveys of the public have shown for years that more than half of the crimes in America are never reported to police. " Only about a quarter of burgla ries get reported, " said professor Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Even fewer larcenies—typically something snatched from a car, shoplifting or a stolen bicycle—are reported.
    Solution rates for these four crimes have remained virtually unchanged for 20 years.
    "Either the police happen upon the crime or the victim knows the offender, " Blumstein said. "Without those, chances of solving a crime are minimal. "
    "In robberies, victims see the offender, though it’s usually a stranger, "he said. That’s why robberies are solved more often than burglaries, larcenies or auto thefts in which victim and thief rarely meet.
    Aggravated assaults are solved much more frequently—58 percent of the time last year— because the victim more often knows the attacker and provides more help catching the culprit, Blumstein noted. Rapes are solved 51 percent of the time.
    Most burglaries "are committed by a hard-core element, "said St. Louis Mayor Clarence Harmon, formerly his city’s police chief. "We may arrest and convict them for the 50th burglary they’ve committed but be unable to convict them for lack of evidence for the previous 49. "
    "That’s why community policing is the best way to increase the closure rate, " Harmon said. "The community provides most of the information police use in solving crimes. Where high numbers of crimes remain unsolved, you often have a community estranged from its police department. "
    On average, property criminals make little profit, not worth even the small chance of detection for most Americans. In 1997, the average robbery loss was $ 995, ranging from a high of $ 4, 802 in bank robberies to a low of $ 576 at convenience stores, the FBI said.
    On average, burglars made off with $ 1, 334, larcenists stole $ 585 and auto thieves took cars worth $ 5, 416.
    But those figures overstate the criminals’ gain. "Those are the losses reported by the victims, often to insurance companies. Robbers usually take cash, but the burglar’s gain is much less, because he takes property that has to be sold to fences at a discount, " Blumstein said. "And many of the auto thefts end up as joy rides. "
    Few people with jobs turn to such crime, Blumstein said, but "it can tempt unskilled people if an economic downturn puts them out of work. "
    The most frequently solved crime is murder—66 percent of the time last year. That is significantly lower than the 78 percent solved in 1975.
    The homicide solution rate dropped in the late 1970s and the 1980s, then plateaued in the 1990s, because the typical murder changed over the last 25 years, said James Alan Fox, dean of the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston.
    "Adults tend to kill people they know very well, family members and co-workers, but the adult murder rate has declined steadily over two decades as the postwar baby boom hit middle age, " Fox said.
    "Teenagers kill strangers and acquaintances, " Fox said. "Those are more difficult to solve. " And the juvenile murder rate exploded by 169 percent between 1984 and 1993 with the crack cocaine epidemic and the guns that drug gangs put in the hands of kids.
    "It’s not that the police have gotten less competent. The nature of murder has changed, enough to overwhelm technological improvements in police work, "Fox said. " We’ve taken the home out of homicide. "