CRIME: SAFER STREETS, YET GREATER FEAR

By Elaine Shannon

America's preoccupation with crime can be summed up by what happened on Jan. 7 in Vidalia, Georgia, a small town known mostly for its sweet onions. Before dawn, dozens of state and federal law officers started banging on doors all over the town's north side. Within minutes, 46 gangsters and crack dealers were in handcuffs, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, while law-abiding neighbors cheered the gangbusters. The task force had been called in by Vidalia's 26-man police force, which had recently found itself outgunned by homegrown drug sellers who were terrorizing citizens and making daily death threats to Vidalia's lone narcotics investigator. Like most of small-town and suburban America, normally peaceful Vidalia had never seen anything like it.

Crime has become Public Enemy No. 1, a bigger concern to most people than joblessness or the federal deficit. All over the U.S., citizens are buying alarm systems, installing window bars and escorting their offspring from school to soccer to Scouts. In a Time/CNN poll, 89% of those surveyed think crime is getting worse, and 55% worry about becoming victims themselves.

The good news, which Americans understandably haven't stopped to appreciate yet, is that the nation's crime rate has declined somewhat during the past 212 years. According to figures collected by the FBI from 16,000 state and local police agencies, the rate of all crimes dropped 4% from 1991 to 1992 and an additional 3.1% from 1992 to 1993. The violent-crime rate fell 1.5% from 1992 to 1993, and preliminary estimates by the FBI show that downward trend continuing into the first half of 1994.

In recent months, violence-ridden cities from New York to Los Angeles have enjoyed sizable decreases in crime in general and murder rates in particular. Part of the explanation is that federal agencies like the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have shrunk their headquarters' staff to attach more agents to local police. FBI Director Louis Freeh credits ``safe streets'' campaigns in 117 communities for reducing crime rates by breaking up street gangs.

Criminal-justice experts say there is no dissonance between the somber mood and the upbeat statistics. The effect of three decades of rising crime rates has been cumulative: rare is the family that has not been scarred. ``We've been living at what is a very high plateau of criminality for a long time,'' says John Stein, deputy director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance. ``And the American public is worn out by it.'' For all Americans, the odds of becoming a victim are far greater than they were in 1963, when the FBI crime index counted 2,180 reported crimes per 100,000 people. Three decades later, police agencies reported investigating more than double that number: 5,483 crimes per 100,000 people.

Crime no longer respects geographic or demographic boundaries either. ``A lot of people felt that if they could move to the suburbs, it would be a safe place,'' says Thomas Constantine, head of the DEA. ``But all these suburbs have developed tremendous crime problems too.'' Perhaps more important, the nature of crime has changed. Thirty years ago, most murderers knew their victims: many were spouses, lovers or family members. Police solved more than 90% of all reported homicides. But in the 1990s, police find that most murders are committed by strangers or people whose identity and motive cannot be determined. As a result, homicide-solution rates plunged from 91% in 1965 to 66% by 1993.

The most chilling sign of things to come is the rising rate of youth violence. According to the FBI, juvenile arrests for violent crime rose 68% from 1984 through 1993. ``Never in our history have we seen this phenomenon of youth violence as random and as inexplicable,'' says Attorney General Janet Reno. Her prescription: more secure facilities for violent youthful offenders and follow-up after they are released. ``We're going to have to support them and assist them in getting a job,'' she says. ``Otherwise it's going to be a revolving door.'' Freeh recommends focusing on the increasing number of children brought up in what he calls ``no-parent homes.'' In 2005, says Freeh, many of these neglected youngsters will be angry teenagers who ``will literally be killing people.''

--By Elaine Shannon

With reporting by DAVID BJERKLIE AND SHARON E. EPPERSON/NEW YORK, ANN BLACKMAN/WASHINGTON AND RICHARD WOODBURY/DENVER. CHARTS RESEARCHED BY DEBORAH L. WELLS, KATHLEEN ADAMS, ELIZABETH L. BLAND, RATU KAMLANI AND RICHARD RUBIN