After rising for two years straight, both violent crime and property crime in the United States dropped significantly in 2007, according to preliminary figures released by the Federal Bureau of Organization Monday.
Violent crimes fell 1.4 percent last year compared to 2006, with drops in each of the four sub-categories: rapes fell 4.3 percent, murder 2.7 percent, and robbery and assault both declined 1.2 percent.
Property crimes, the second main category of crime overall, dropped 2.1 percent last year, the FBI said.
The figures, based on data from more than 12,000 local law enforcement agencies, masked a significant difference between urban and rural regions. In medium and large cities, violent crime fell, with an especially sharp 9.8 percent drop in murders in cities of one million or more population.
But in distant suburbs and rural areas, violent crime was up 1.7 percent; murder rose 3.7 percent in cities with populations of 50,000 to 99,999.
Also notably, violent crime declined in three of the four main regions of the country, but it rose in the southeastern section of the United States.
"One preliminary report doesn't make a trend, but the numbers are going the way we want them to go," said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko.
Meanwhile a separate Department of Justice report on prisons released Friday showed that the number of prisoners in US state, federal and local institutions grew 2.1 percent in the year to June 30, 2007, rising 46,887 to a total of just under 2.3 million inmates.
With the highest level of incarceration of any country in the world, the US has 762 people in jail for every 100,000 population, a rise from 684 per 100,000 in 2000, and compared to just 91 of 100,000 in France, for instance.
