Illegal immigration goes down, crime rates goes down.
Despite recent increases in the rates of murder and rape, over the past 10 years, Arizona’s reported crime rate has dropped by nearly a third, according to a new analysis of FBI crime data released Tuesday by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission.
The 32.4 percent decrease in reported crime easily outpaced the 18.9 percent nationwide drop over the same time period. The biggest single driver of Arizona’s decline was a 60 percent drop in the rate of motor-vehicle thefts from 2000 to 2010.
Although the rates of most reported crimes fell more sharply than the national average over the decade, Arizona’s rate for each of the seven types of crime in the FBI index remains above the national median.
The crimes tracked include four categories of violent crime (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) and three property crimes (burglary, larceny theft and motor-vehicle theft).
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