The Law: Gaining on the Cities

It is the city dweller's old dream: a cottage far from the lethal crowd, perhaps in a little town where the air is sweet, the living easy and, most important, the streets are clean of muggers, rapists and Saturday night specialists.

Such asphalt visionaries may be better off restricting their rural fantasies to improved air quality. Good ol' country living now suffers from that big-city disease known as a rising crime rate, according to the FBI'S annual Uniform Crime Reports released last week. In rural areas, serious crime—murder, rape, burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, larceny and theft—was up 8% in 1975. That increase...

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