For the third year in a row, our Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report shows that violent crime, property crime, and arson have decreased. The latest report compares January-June 2009 figures with the same time period in 2008.

Crimes reported to our Uniform Crime Program are down collectively: violent crime overall decreased 4.4 percent, property crime is down 6.1 percent, and arson fell 8.2 percent.

Individual crimes are also decreasing across the board: 

   * Murder (down 10.0 percent);
    * Forcible rape (down 3.3 percent);
    * Robbery (down 6.5 percent);
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      The 2009 crime statistics are preliminary; the final report will be issued next year.

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      Aggravated assault (down 3.2 percent);
    * Burglary (down 2.5 percent);
    * Larceny-theft (down 5.3 percent); and
    * Motor vehicle theft (down 18.7 percent).

Other interesting highlights:

    * Murder was lower in all four regions of the country, with the largest decreases in the Northeast (13.7 percent) and the West (13.3 percent).
    * Motor vehicle thefts decreased significantly in all four regions of the country (Northeast, 19.3 percent; Midwest, 21.4 percent; South, 17.8 percent; and West, 18.2 percent).
    * While violent crime and aggravated assault were down in cities of more than 1 million people (7.0 percent and 6.2 percent, respectively), in cities of populations between 10,000 and 24,999, violent crime rose 1.7 percent and aggravated assault rose 3.8 percent.
    * While both metropolitan areas and non-metropolitan areas experienced decreases in violent crime and property crime in general, non-metropolitan counties saw increases in robbery (3.8 percent) and arson (1.2 percent).
    * On a regional basis, the only uptick in any crime was a slight increase in burglaries in the South (up 0.7 percent)

Developing this national view of crime is a collective effort of the FBI and the thousands of city, university/college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies that submit the data to us. Participating agencies throughout the country voluntarily provide reports on crimes known to police and on persons arrested.

The data has become a source of information used widely by police administrators, government policy makers, social science researchers, the media, and others concerned about the impact of crime in our communities. We do, however, caution against drawing conclusions from our data by making direct comparisons between law enforcement agenciesvalid assessments are possible ONLY with careful study and analysis of the range of unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction.

The FBI has been collecting crime data from our law enforcement partners since the 1930s. Over the years, the scope of the program has expanded in response to suggestions from law enforcement advisory groups or to comply with federal mandates. Today, the culmination of this national data collection is three annual publications: Crime in the United States, Hate Crime Statistics, and Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, as well as semiannual reports like this one.

The full 2009 Crime in the U.S. report will be released later next year.