Are crime rates in the United States the highest today that they have ever been?

Part 1 and Part 2 should be seperate to two document.

Part 1:

Without looking it up in our book or online, discuss your opinion about crime in the United States. Consider the following questions:

Are crime rates in the United States the highest today that they have ever been?

Are they going up or down?

What factors contribute to the fluctuations in crime?

Part 2:
Look up statistics on crime in the United States. (see the list of websites below). Reply to your original post with a reflection on what you found. Review and reply to 2 of your classmates’ posts and share any evidence you found that would contribute to their thinking.

What patterns do you see?

Are crime rates higher today than ever or are they going down?

Were you correct in your previous assumptions in Part One about crime?

What factors do you think contribute to the patterns of crime in the U.S?

Note:

Two really good sources for crime statistics are FBI-Uniform Crimes Report and Bureau of Justice Statistics

You can use other sources but make sure you cite all of them in your post. (ex-> According to the Census Bureau, there were 46.2 million people in poverty in United States (Census Bureau, 2012) http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/p60-243.pdf

If you have an article, use the title as your reference and include the website. (ex-> In the article, “Poverty in America,” it is stated that of the 46 million people living in poverty, 16 million are children. (NBC News, 2013) http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/04/17088839-poverty-in-america-a-problem-hidden-in-plain-sight?lite