In a tanking US economy, finally a glimmer of an unusual sort.
From CBS:

The National Crime Victimization study, released Wednesday by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, showed violent and property crime last year reached the lowest level ever recorded in the survey, which was first published in 1973.
The survey estimated that violent crime dropped by 11.2 percent and property crimes 5.5 percent from 2008 levels.
The survey interviews more than 135,000 U.S. residents, so it captures not only crimes reported to the police but also those that went unreported. Studies show more than half of crimes are never reported to the police.
Last month, the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report showed a 5.3 percent drop in reports to police of violent crimes last year and a 4.6 percent decline in reported property crimes.

The stats seemingly goes against the grain in times of economic stress.
And it depicts a trend, despite all the wildness out there: Survey results over a 10-year period show violent crime plummeted 39 percent while property crime declined 29 percent.

These figures somehow coil around the reported upswing in right-wing fringe groups, gun ownership and open, occasionally violent outbursts against government.
Last March, The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report revealing a return of “hate groups” in a big way — their number jumped nearly 250 percent to more than 500 with deepening ties to conservative mainstream politics.

“Already there are signs of … violence emanating from the radical right.
Since the installation of Barack Obama, rightwing extremists have murdered six law enforcement officers. Racist skinheads and others have been arrested in alleged plots to assassinate the nation’s first black president.
One man from Brockton, Massachusetts — who told police he had learned on white supremacist websites that a genocide was under way against whites — is charged with murdering two black people and planning to kill as many Jews as possible on the day after Obama’s inauguration.
Most recently, a rash of individuals with anti-government, survivalist or racist views have been arrested in a series of bomb cases.”

Good stats for the rank-and-file, common-man criminal, but if there’s politics involved, get ready for the violent shit to hit the judicial fan.
Beware the so-called constitutional criminal — believe what I do or you die.