Does the Strategy Work?

You decide!

Here are some of the latest data, from June, 2011, provided by the High Point Police Department:

• High Point’s violent crime index has decreased 47% since 1997.
• Violent crime in 2010 decreased for the third year in a row, marking the first time violent crime has decreased three years in a row in over twenty years.
• The total number of violent crimes in 2010 was 595 (we used to average over 1200); that is the fewest number of violent crimes in modern history.  It has not been that low in the last 20 years of record keeping.
• A Michigan State University report published in February 2010 compared index offenses in High Point (16.4 per 10,000) with the average U.S. index offense rates (256.2 per 10,000), as well comparably sized areas (339.8 per 10,000) and found that the overall city experiences much lower rates of violent and property crime.
• Total social cost of crime savings in High Point every year is estimated at more than $40,000,000 per year.
• In addition, a report on notified offenders in the last three years (2008-2010) shows of the 156 offenders notified, only 15 committed a prohibited offense (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, any weapons offense and drug trafficking) after being called-in.  That is a 9.6% recidivism rate.  The national average for recidivism rate for an offender released from prison is 67% (this percentage reoffend in the first 3 years).