The number of serious violent crimes reported across Arkansas in 2015 reached the highest level in at least a decade, just two years after it dropped to a 10-year low, according to estimates released Monday by the FBI.
Violent crimes reported by Arkansas' local law enforcement agencies to the FBI rose by 9 percent from 2014 and by 14 percent from 2013, the figures show.
Arkansas' spike coincided with a slower rise nationally in the number of violent crimes documented by police departments. It mirrors the cumulative increase across the state's seven largest cities, those with at least 60,000 residents, which together contain about one-fifth of the state's population.
The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program relies on information volunteered by police departments. Not all agencies participate, and critics say there's no mechanism to ensure departments accurately report every crime they know about. It compiles four violent crimes -- homicides, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults -- as well as property crimes such as burglaries and thefts.
[SEARCHABLE DATABASES: See Arkansas violent, property crimes by city]
Crime rates fluctuate from time to time, and it's difficult to fully understand what factors are driving them at any given moment, said Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola, a former prosecutor.
"I think a lot of experts would like to be able to answer that, because they'd make a lot of money figuring it out," Stodola said.
Monday's release fell on the same day that presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump debated head-to-head for the first time. Trump, the Republican nominee, has made crime a central component of his campaign.
Although the 15,526 violent crimes reported in Arkansas last year are the decade's highest, the number per 100,000 residents was about 521, which is hardly unprecedented.
Over the past 10 years in Arkansas, the per-capita violent-crime rate peaked at 552 in 2006 and bottomed-out at 460 in 2013. Twenty years ago, 595 violent crimes were reported per 100,000 Arkansans.
Nationally, there were an estimated 373 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2015.
The state's aggravated assaults jumped by more than 15 percent, to 11,316, between 2013 and 2015 and make up the vast majority of the total violent-crime increase.
Stodola said that type of crime is mostly driven by family and drug violence. Efforts to crack down on prescription-pill abuse nationwide are leading more people to heroin dealers, he said, adding that encounters in the narcotics trade can be violent.
"Many of the states are passing these laws where ... it's harder to get a hold of [prescription pills]," Stodola said. "Gradually, as it gets more and more difficult to get those kind of opioids, they [addicts] turn to heroin."
Rape is also becoming far more frequent, with a 36 percent statewide increase over those two years, to 1,931.
Homicide and non-negligent manslaughter, which the FBI lumps together, reached the highest level statewide since 2005-07. It climbed to 181, or nearly one every two days.
Robbery, the fourth violent-crime variety counted by the FBI, has fallen 7 percent since 2013 to 2,098.
Meanwhile, the number of property crimes reported in Arkansas continued a long-term decline. Last year, 93,800 such crimes were reported across Arkansas, down 2.2 percent from 2014 and 14.1 percent from 2005. The volume has dropped every year since 2011.
Across the United States, violent crime rose by 3.9 percent, to 1.2 million, though the total was lower than levels from five and 10 years ago, the FBI said. The number of homicides and non-negligent manslaughter cases reported across the country jumped by 10.8 percent from 2014 to 2015, when 15,696 were counted.
"We still have so much work to do," U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said about the FBI report. "It is important to remember that while crime did increase overall last year, 2015 still represented the third-lowest year for violent crime in the past two decades."
FBI Director James Comey has been among the most high-profile figures voicing concerns, and he said earlier this year that he remains worried because homicides continue to spike in major cities nationwide so far this year.
"I don't know what the answer is, but, holy cow, do we have a problem," Comey said to reporters in May. He acknowledged that this comes at a time when crime is far lower than what it was during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but he said this is little comfort.
In Arkansas, the 9 percent jump from 2014 to 2015 mirrored a similar increase across the state's seven cities: Little Rock, Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Jonesboro, North Little Rock, Conway and Rogers.
Those cities contain about 21 percent of the state's population and were the location for 36 percent of the state's reported violent crime in 2015.
Violent crime rose year-to-year in each of those cities. Collectively, the number of murders decreased by three deaths, and aggravated assault increased by 12.3 percent to about 4,000.
Information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/27/2016
