Mixxalot, I’d recommend you take a look at the Freakanomics book. It makes the point that compared to the 1970s, we are doing a better job at jailing criminals, which is one of the reasons cited for the enormous decline in crime rates we saw in the 1990s (another reason is the legalization of induced abortion). Also, if you compare the USA with other industrialized countries, you’ll see that a larger proportion of the population is jailed here.
Unfortunately, there’s a limit to how much crime can be reduced (in a large metro area) without turning our country into a police state. As an example, the Saddam-era Iraq was very safe crime-wise, because the dictator’s cops were in every corner watching everything and everybody. Sure, they had no muggers or rapists, but no freedom either.
