The "improving trauma care" can't explain why there have been declines in categories of crime across the board,[1] or why murder rates spiked almost as steeply

The "improving trauma care" can't explain why there have been declines in categories of crime across the board,[1] or why murder rates spiked almost as steeply from the 50s to the 90s (while trauma care was also improving) as they declined afterwards.[2] Vehicle theft rates are less than a fourth what they were in 1990. Burglary less than half. Aggravated assault is down 40%. Vandalism has been cut in half. Fraud is less than a fourth of what it was in 1995. Most notably, homicide rates track really closely with violent crime rates overall.[2] You can say BJS is biased and collecting terrible stats, but this would have to be a new bias, since we're comparing their stats to earlier results. And they at least try to cross check trends across different methodologies, and publicize their methods for critics to scrutinize. Their approach would make it likely they'd notice some obvious trend (that would only affect death rates) that was skewing their stats.[3] Also, other data sources seem to confirm their findings, including those from local police.[4] It could be that many factors are conspiring to distort these statistics, each one covering for the other. The amount of other factors that would have to be messing with the statistics simultaneously though make the trauma care hypothesis seem a likely target for occam's razor. Crime rates absolutely did fall. Every criminologist and even several economists are scrambling to solve the puzzle, and no one has definitively succeeded. It's a real trend driving everyone to study it, and there's no "gotcha" explanation for it, it's going to be a product of several complex factors. [1] http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.cfm http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=datool&surl=/arrests/index.c... [2] http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-historical-perspective-on-violence-in-the-united-states.html http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2012/12/a-histor... [3] https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html https://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/about/crime_measures.html [4] http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_statistics.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/crime_prevention/crime_sta...