The FBI recently reported that crime in the United States was down in the first half of 2009 (which is the latest statistics available) compared to 2008. The full report for 2009 will be released later this year.

The FBI has been collecting crime data from law enforcement agencies since the 1930's and have had to make many changes to the Uniformed Crime Report (UCR) system over the years to make the statistics more meaningful, useful, and accurate.

In all the major categories, there were reductions as follows: murder down 10%, forcible rape down 3.3%, robbery down 6.5%, aggravated assault down 3.2%, burglary down 2.5%, larceny/theft down 5.3%, motor vehicle thefts down 18.7%, and arson down 8.2%.

This is great news, especially since this is the third year in a row that crime has decreased.

It is a credit to our law enforcement community as a whole, efforts by businesses and other organizations in taking a proactive role to security to reduce the opportunities for criminals, the security technology companies who are always looking for ways to make security more effective and efficient, and the community organizations who are helping make the actual offenders a more productive part of our society.

The news of this reduction is even more meaningful when you consider the state of the economy last year.

Many pundits predicted that crime would rise because of the hard times people were facing. I tended to doubt this theory early on and the statistics are proving it wrong. If you understand anything about people and criminals you know that criminals are what they are, good financial times or bad, they will continue to commit their crimes - that is just what they do.

However good people are just that, good people, who will not resort to crime even in hard financial times...they worked harder, endure, and get help from others where they are able.

Sure there may be the desperate cases of the person who is about to lose everything and commits a bank robbery or tragically we saw instances over the last year where a family member killed their own relatives because they became so distraught over finances.

But these are the exceptions; there will always be people who resort to extreme violent measures due to their circumstances, be it the economy, divorce, illness, or some other hardship.

So, what does this mean to the Christian community and the security of churches and ministries?

I am not sure.

Since 2009 was the first year the Christian Security Network collected crime data specifically for Christian organizations (see our 2009 crime report), there is nothing to compare it to, so I can't say that crime was down or up for churches last year compared to previous years.

So far this year we have already seen almost 50 crimes, from murder to arsons to assaults, in churches and ministries in the United States, and we are only three weeks into the year.  In the future we will start doing some comparisons. But as I have stated in the past, statistics are great, but even one death or person hurt is too many. Lost property is lost time and resources for many churches in carrying out the Lord's work.

Decreases in crime are great, unless you are the victim; then it doesn't really matter much how many less there were than the previous year.

If it hurts the church, it hurts all of us as Christians.

In Christ,
Jeff Hawkins
Executive Director

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