Changes over Time in Robbery Rates
Robbery is often cited as the offense most people worry about when they express their fears about
street crime. Robbery is a confrontational crime in which force is used, or violence is threatened (…“or else”). Figure 4.3 displays the trends in rob- bery rates according to UCR and NCVS data. The UCR trend line shows that robberies soared after 1977, peaked in 1981, plunged until 1985, and then shot up again to record levels in the early 1990s. After that, reports of muggings and holdups plummeted impressively until 2001. Known cases of robberies largely continued to drift downward during the first decade of the twenty-first century (bottoming out in 2010), and then ending up in 2013 a little above their lowest level in 40 years (FBI, 2014b).
The NCVS trend line tells a very similar, but not identical, story. It indicates that the robbery rate fell between 1974 and 1978, rebounded until 1981 when it hit an all-time high, dropped sharply dur- ing the early 1980s, but then climbed back up from 1985 until 1994. The robbery rate then tumbled an impressive 65 percent between 1993 and 2002 before creeping back up a little. By 2013, disclo- sures to interviewers about robberies had reached their lowest levels since the NCVS surveys began 40 years earlier.