Gaining on the Cities

It is the city dweller's old dream: a cottage far from the lethal crowd, perhaps in a little town where the air is sweet, the living easy and, most important, the streets are clean of muggers, rapists and Saturday night specialists.

Such asphalt visionaries may be better off restricting their rural fantasies to improved air quality. Good ol' country living now suffers from that big-city disease known as a rising crime rate, according to the FBI'S annual Uniform Crime Reports released last week. In rural areas, serious crime--murder, rape, burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny and theft--was up 8% in 1975. That increase was a percentage point higher than the crime rise in large cities (pop. over 250,000). Things were even worse in the suburbs, which racked up a 10% increase over 1974. There is still more crime in urban areas, but the rest of the country is creeping up: crime beyond the cities has leaped an alarming 40% since 1972 (see chart).

No one is precisely sure of the reasons for the exurban increases, but there are some theories: rural and suburban police have improved crime reporting methods; youths in affluent suburbs are finding crime increasingly attractive; the nation's highway system has enabled criminals to become fast commuters.

Nationwide, not all the statistics were as dark as in past years. For the first time since 1962, murders were actually down (by 1%). In addition, the rise in the overall crime rate moderated to 10% during 1975, a sharp improvement over 1974's 18%. Robbery shot up 15% in 1974; last year it rose only 5%.

But at best the figures only show the situation worsening at a slower pace. Last year, about 21 serious crimes were committed every minute; a violent crime like rape or assault, every 31 seconds. The FBI clocked one murder every 26 minutes. The bleakest news in the report: only a fifth of last year's 11.3 million serious crimes resulted in arrest.

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