Mayor: New York City on track for record-low crime rates

With only four days to go in the year, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that the big city is on track to set a new record low in homicide and shooting rates in 2013. There have been 332 homicides so far this year, down 20 percent from last year's record low, and down nearly 50 percent from 2001, the mayor said. This year is set to be the lowest since the city started keeping track in 1963. Meanwhile, the number of shootings has fallen by 20 percent from last year's record low -- with 1,093 shootings reported through Thursday -- down 32 percent from 2001, he said. Overall crime is now down 32 percent from 2001 in a city of 8.4 million people, he said, noting that the decline has not been achieved by putting more people in prison. Rather, it's been achieved while putting far fewer people in prison as incarceration rates in New York City have decreased by 36 percent from 2001, he said. The innovative programs the city is undertaking are helping to keep people out of jail, and to prevent them from returning to jail, as it believes discharge planning and pre-release preparation are critical to reducing recidivism for both pretrial and sentenced inmates, he added. The mayor attributed the historic crime lows in the city to strict gun laws that are strictly enforced and also aggressively defended the New York Police Department's use of the controversial stop-and-frisk tactic as a key to the big drop in violent crime. The most murders New York City recorded in a single year was 2, 245 murders in 1990, an average of six murders a day. New York City is now averaging less than one murder a day, even though its population has grown by about 300,000 people since 2001.