SAN FRANCISCO, June 25: For the first time in a decade, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reporting the number of thefts, assaults, murders, and rapes is up across the United States in all regions of the country, except the northeast.

Homicides, which criminologists consider the most reliable gauge of the nation’s safety, were up 3.1 percent.

The increase brings to a close a decade of remarkable declines in illicit activity, which helped revitalize the US urban areas and brought a renewed a sense of civility and security for millions of Americans, Christian Science Monitor said.

Criminologists have attributed the increase to the economic slowdown, an increase in the number of teens reaching their anticipated peak crime-committing years, and a wave of ex-drug dealers and gang members arrested in the 1980s returning to the streets after time in prison.

Another factor is seen as cutting down of crime-fighting and prevention programmes.

The Bush administration is proposing to reduce by 80 per cent the Community Oriented Policing Services programme (COPS) that helped put 115,000 new police on the beat since 1994.