Crime rates from across the nation are compiled yearly in two government reports: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Crime Victimization Survey. The FBI counts the number of crimes reported to police each year, while the BJS asks thousands of people whether they have been the victim of a crime within the past year.

While these official statistics show that rates of violent crime have decreased by some measure during the 1990s, many commentators maintain that the overall crime problem is still extremely serious. Francis Mancini, a columnist for the Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin, contends that crime rates are still much higher than they were in the early 1960s. The crime rate must decline to the levels of the 1960s, he argues, before the situation can be considered acceptable. “We must not allow ourselves to...