There is an opinion that currently the crime rate is lower than it was previously because of the technological progress. Personally, I tend to agree with this statement for a number of reasons such as synergy between CCTV and software for facial recognition, and upgrading of data bases.
One of the main reasons for decreasing of crime rate is an upgrade of CCTV and using it in pair with programme of face recognition, due to it committing of any crime will be recorded on video and lately the program will reveal who did it. It means that it is easier now solve crimes for police and at the same time it becomes more complex to commit them and be unnoticed for criminals, hence the number of cases is falling, because it prevents criminals from committing crimes, in contrast with the past, when the CCTV was not so widespread and had less quality of the video as it is today.
Moreover, nowadays there are a lot of data bases, which consist tons of information about people and it could help for investigation, whereas previously all information was on paper and it was not convenient to use it especially if crimes were happened in different cities of even countries, so it let criminals to commit crimes two or even more times. And now due to improvement of technologies there are data bases which include information which are available from any cities, hence it is easier to prevent the repeat offences. For example, somebody committed a crime and got a light punishment, then moves to another city and did the same, so the people in charge looked at the history of punishment and at this time gave a harder punishment.
In conclusion, I strongly believe that nowadays the crime rate is lower than it was in the past because of the advance of technology.