JUST AS DEMOCRATS FEEL FREE TO CRACK DOWN ON TORTURE NOW THAT IT'S WORKED...:

Preliminary figures suggest 2014 will continue a decade-long trend of falling crime rates, especially in major cities once plagued by violent crime. [...]

[T]he trend lines are clear: The number of violent crimes has declined since 2006, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The number of violent crimes committed per 100,000 people has been dropping even longer, from a high of 758 in 1991 to 367.9 in 2013. The rate hasn't topped 500 per 100,000 people since 2001.

James Alan Fox, a crime statistics expert and professor of criminology, law and public policy at Northeastern University, pointed to four major factors contributing to the falling crime rate across the country:

- Long prison sentences, which have lengthened on average since sentencing reform initiatives in many states in the 1990s, have kept more criminals behind bars, albeit at a significant cost to state budgets.

- Improved community policing strategies are sending cops to places where crime is more likely to occur, as a prevention method. Technologies like video surveillance and acoustic sensors, which can hear gunshots before residents report a crime, are improving police response, too.

- A changing drug market has plunged the cost of heroin near historic lows, reducing crime associated with the drug trade. Pollack added that the end of the crack epidemic of the 1990s and 2000s has also contributed to a decline in drug-related violence.

- And an aging population is less likely to commit crimes. The fastest growing segment of the population is seniors, an age at which far fewer crimes are committed.

Academics advance other theories for the falling crime rate, ranging from the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion, the declining use of lead paint and improvements in medical technologies used in emergency rooms, which can save lives that would otherwise have been lost.

"Because the crime drop is being seen in so many places, one should be a bit skeptical of any particular police chief claiming that it is because of what his or her department is doing or any lawmaker claiming that some new legislation is responsible," Fox said. "While local efforts may contribute, that the pattern is widespread tends to suggest global factors, not so much local initiatives."

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