In recent years, the United States violent crime rate as well as the property crime rate has come down considerably from their highs back in and around 1990. Not too surprisingly, when crime is trending down, there are all sorts of people and organizations that wish to take credit for this being so, of which the general belief is that a stronger police presence, especially in known "hot spots" and the correspondingly higher incarceration of incorrigible criminals is the prevailing reason of why crime has gone down, which seems somewhat logical, but isn't nearly the whole truth.
In point of fact, violent crimes and property crimes are committed for all sorts of reasons, of which, poverty, lack, ill education, family dysfunction, impulsiveness, bad decision making, discrimination, the lethality of weapons, and hopelessness are always going to be salient factors. The fact that there is a fair amount of crime in America, should not be a big surprise, because America has all sorts of issues in regards to the fabric of its being, of which, those issues have never been successfully resolved or ameliorated, and are therefore a constant scourge to its social fabric.
What many pundits seem to forget when it comes to crime, is that crime ultimately is conducted by human beings, of which, those human beings live in communities, and to the extent that a given community is engaged positively with those that are part and parcel of that community, this most definitely makes a significant difference about the amount of crime so committed within and around those neighborhoods. That is to say, a neighborhood in which the good citizens of it, are effectively hiding behind bars in their own homes, and will not allow their children to roam the streets, is a neighborhood that quite clearly has ceded control of those streets to the criminal element. On the other hand, a neighborhood, that makes it their point to be neighborly, and to thereby know each of its residents to the degree that it is possible, as well as believing in the importance of community upkeep, common courtesy, communication, respect, and concern, is going to be a neighborhood that will have less crime.
In other words, how people, engage with one another in and around their neighborhood, is a significant factor as to whether crime does occur there or not. Those communities that demonstrate more cohesiveness, more often than not, are going to have less crime, because crime breeds so much better, in areas that lack hope, opportunity, and accountability. This thus means, that crime does not just happen, for there indeed are often proximate reasons as to why it is occurring; so that crime can be mitigated to some degree or even to a large degree, by the very people that live within those communities, when they make it their point to do something constructive about that crime by becoming more involved with one another. That is to say, people that really know each other, and have a real concern about their neighbors and what is going on within their neighborhood, and are willing to be of aid one to another, are going to invariably reduce crime, because those that take responsibility for one another, have created bonds that will not easily be broken by those that are contemplating crime.