More New Yorkers are out of work, and the cash-strapped city isn’t graduating a new class of police cadets this year. And yet crime is going down – way down.

New York City is heading toward a record low number of murders this year, and overall crime is also down, the New York Police Department said Friday.

The NYPD projects about 457 murders this year, the lowest total since the department first started keeping records in 1962.

And, overall crime is down nearly 12 percent from 2008, and 40 percent since 2001, the NYPD said.

The downward trend is mystifying criminologists who say crime usually rises when times are tough.

“I don’t have an answer to it,” said Andrew Karmen, a sociology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “The poor and the unemployed are not fed up, or in despair, or still retain hope that the economy will turn.”

The nation’s largest police department will continue to work diligently to combat crime, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said this week.

RELATED:

Cop Will Not Be Charged In Fatal Shooting Of Black Officer

Batman & Superman Fight NYPD In Times Square

News One Links