When I think of the word crime, I think of any act that breaks a law—not wearing a seat belt (criminal offense) up to the most violent of crimes (felony) and everything in between. The worse the crime, the more severe the penalty.

I’ve heard it said that crime is down in the US. But based on nightly news, my mind just can’t grasp that crime is down. I ask myself,

What about all the flash mob robberies, car break-ins, front porch package stealing, catalytic converter snatching, rioting and property damage, burning our beautiful flag, hate crimes, and on the list continues.

Guess what I learned? Not all crimes are reported to those reporting the stats and some crimes are never even reported as crimes. Based on my research, I found out crime reports are developed by the FBI and Dept. of Justice from their collection of stats. Local authorities voluntarily report their stats and currently only about 83% report. I also discovered,

“Historically, the FBI has also only published statistics about a handful of specific violent and property crimes, but not many other types of crime, such as drug crime.”

What? They don’t report drug crimes? Yet, illegal drug sales and use are up in the US. (Have you seen the Narcan vending machines across the country?) Did you know that hundreds of thousands of pounds (yes, I said pounds) of illegal drugs have been seized at our southern border? I can’t even imagine how many pounds made it across undetected.

So naturally my mind goes to the border. We have laws in place on how to enter our country. Yet almost 10 million people have illegally crossed into our country over the last few years. Of course, not all have criminal intent, but all are breaking our laws. Those with criminal intent are flooding our communities with drugs killing hundreds of thousands. They are involved in human trafficking and God only knows what else.

10 more million people have broken our laws (criminal offenses up to felonies) and no penalties and obviously 10 million are not included in our current crime stats or I guarantee you “crime would not be down.”

In doing my research and seeing what crime is doing in our communities and country, I’m reminded of a book in the Bible called Judges. It was during a time when God raised Judges to help His people keep His laws. The judges would do much like our current judges do. They would declare right from wrong based on the law.

Without God’s judges, the people got themselves into a heap of trouble and would cry out to God who raised another judge. But when that judge would die the people would get themselves into another big mess and the pattern repeated itself. But there was one judge story I love the most – a woman of all things. Her name was Deborah, and it’s said that in her time people were oppressed and community life was dangerous. So much so people were afraid of traveling on the roads. The warriors or those in charge of protecting the people had laid down their weapons so the people were vulnerable and unprotected from those who were trying to oppress them. In other words, crime was rampant. Until it says Deborah arose a mother in Israel. Not only was she telling the people what’s right and wrong, but she led the way saying - not on my watch!

It just makes me think we can tell people what’s right and wrong all day long. Right can be based on our laws, and right can be based on God’s laws. (It’s amazing how many of our US laws are based on God’s laws.) But enforcing the law is placed in the hands of those put in place to protect us from those who break the law. There is to be no partiality.

Crime is a serious problem in our country and in my opinion, we have too few fighting it. Sure does remind me of Deborah's time. It also reminds me that during this election season to stay focused on the issues I'm the most concerned about and not let all the noise get me distracted.

https://homeland.house.gov/.../April-24-Startling-Stats.pdf

https://immigrationforum.org/.../illicit-fentanyl-and.../

https://homeland.house.gov/.../startling-stats-factsheet.../

https://www.pewresearch.org/.../what-the-data-says-about.../