Excerpt from Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1978

This year's publication, Crime in the United States - 1978, is the 49th such annual document issued by the fbi on behalf of the law enforcement community. The information contained in this book is a social statement. In many respects it represents one of the darker sides of human behavior in this country and should not be taken lightly.

Since 1930, the fbi has been collecting crime-related statistics submitted voluntarily by the law enforcement agencies of this Nation. The great volume of information thus received is correlated periodically and published for the information of the American people and to provide law enforcement and other areas of the criminal justice community with both an insight to criminality throughout the United States and a sound basis for studies of criminal activity.

In the late 19605, the severity of the crime problem caught the attention of the American people, as well as the Congress of the United States. The result was a concerted effort on the part of city, county, state, and Federal agencies to improve their crime -fighting capabilities Massive sums of money have been infused into the criminal justice system during the past decade. Statistically, it appears that these remarkable efforts have not had the impact on the incidence of crime envisioned earlier in this decade. It IS a matter of record, however, that the various elements of the criminal justice community have made great strides by improving their efficiency and professionalism. Studies exist which indicate that the educational levels and the requisite training of police officers have dramatically improved over the years, better preparing those empowered to enforce the law. Other studies document the changes and improvement for progress within other elements of the criminal justice community.

But delegation of this problem to law enforcement agencies, however professional, has not been enough. Unless we as citizens collectively and individually join the crusade against crime, the vast resources of our respective governments will apparently have little or no effect on this Nation's crime situation. A mere perusal of the statistics in this publication conceivably attests to that fact. There are many programs initiated at the community level by law enforcement agencies which actively solicit the support of the citizenry. It is now up to us to respond to this solicitation and work hand-ih hand with law enforcement if we are to make any inroads in this Nation's crime problem.

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