America's historic drop in violent crime: By the numbers

Crime is supposed to spike when times get tough, so why are most crime statistics at low levels not seen since before the days of color TV?

A shopping mall in downtown Flint, Mich.: Flint has the highest rate of violent crime of any U.S city with more than 100,000 people, but violent crime across the country has dropped 4 percent
(Image credit: Bob Krist/CORBIS)

The conventional wisdom is that crime rises during hard economic times. Well, either that's wrong or the economy isn't really that bad, according to new preliminary national crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In fact, U.S. crime rates in 2011 hit their lowest levels since World War II, University of Maryland criminologist Gary LaFree tells MSNBC. Experts cite a number of possible reasons for the prolonged drop in crime, including better policing techniques, an aging population, and, somewhat counterintuitively, the unifying effects of the recession. Here's a look at our Leave It to Beaver–level crime rates, by the numbers:

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