Violent Crime Is Rising in U.S. and Victims Aren't Reporting It

(Bloomberg) -- The rate of violent crime in the U.S. rose for a third straight year in 2018, driven partly by an increase in rape and sexual-assault incidents that victims didn’t report to police.

Americans aged 12 and older said they were victims of about 23 violent crimes per 1,000 people last year, up from 19 in 2015, the Justice Department reported Tuesday in results of the annual National Crime and Victimization Survey.

A rising rate of violent crime in recent years has partly reversed the long decline from 1993 -- when it stood at about 80 incidents per 1,000 people -- to 2015. The report said the increase between 2015 and 2018 was driven by incidents that went unreported to police, “while the rate of violent victimizations reported to police showed no statistically significant change.”

Rape or sexual assault in particular nearly doubled last year, to 2.7 victimizations per 1,000 people from 1.4 in 2017, according to the report, whereas “all other crime types did not have a statistically significant change from 2017 to 2018.” It was also the only category of violent crime to register a statistically-significant decline in incidents reported to police, to 25% in 2018 from 40% in 2017.

“Victims may not report a crime for a variety of reasons, including fear of reprisal or getting the offender in trouble, believing that police would not or could not do anything to help, and believing the crime to be a personal issue or too trivial,” the report said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Boesler in New York at mboesler1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Scott Lanman, Alister Bull

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