The recent declines in serious crime are mostly genuine, but it is inappropriate to exaggerate the successes or take the wrong lessons from them. The United States is a far more violent country than the rest of the advanced industrial world despite the declines in violent crime since the early 1990's. In addition, the recent declines represent a drop from an extraordinary peak and not a sudden fall from a plateau. Moreover, criminality statistics need to the country's high incarceration rate. The misinterpretation of declines in violence exaggerates the roles of some kinds of criminal justice strategies and underestimates the role of social factors that are probably more important. A reversal of the current economic boom could lead to increases in violent crime and a situation similar to that in Brazil, which has vast inequalities, extreme social exclusion, and the use of the criminal justice system to contain the situation. Criminologists need to help the country avoid this situation by urging preventive social investments that can really reduce violent crime in enduring and human ways and by pushing for an end to systemic abuses in criminal justice institutions and for a change to an emphasis on rebuilding offenders' lives and productive capacities. Criminologists also need to have a larger role in shaping future social policy.