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America sees murder rate drop to lowest level in 125 years

David BenjaminFebruary 23, 2026

It may not feel like it, anecdotally, or from what we all take from the news, but the murder rate is actually falling in the United States. Not inching down, either. But falling fast. Fresh figures from the Council on Criminal Justice suggest that homicides dropped a full 21% in 2025 across 35 major US cities. That’s the biggest single year decline ever recorded. Analysts think that the national rate could land near 4.0 per 100,000 people once final FBI data is analysed and released soon, which would make it the lowest in some 125 years. After the grim Covid-era murder spike, the direction of travel has flipped surprisingly hard. (Picture: Getty Images)

The scale of the turnaround is quite striking too. Of 35 cities reporting this murder data, no less than 31 of them saw murders drop off significantly in 2025 compared to 2024. Denver recorded a 41% drop. Washington D.C. and Omaha both logged 40% declines. Baltimore, a city that’s long been associated with high homicide numbers, cut intentional killings by an impressive 60% compared with pre-pandemic levels and hit a record low. Salt Lake City, Chattanooga and El Paso each saw their murder rates roughly halved between 2019 and 2025. For cities that felt stuck in a grim criminal spiral just a few years ago, these numbers are extremely encouraging. (Picture: Getty Images)

It isn’t just murder, either. The Council on Criminal Justice tracked multiple offences across 40 cities and found that all seven categories of violent crime fell below pre-pandemic levels for the very first time. Compared with 2019 there were 25% fewer homicides, 13% fewer shootings and 29% fewer carjackings. Aggravated assaults dropped 9% year on year. Gun assaults fell 22%. Robbery tumbled by 23%. Nine of 13 tracked crimes declined by at least 10%. The only category moving the wrong way between 2024 and 2025 was drug offences, up 7% nationally (though they’re still below 2019 levels). (Picture: Getty Images)

To understand the full context of the situation, we need to rewind back to 2020. Back to those unhappy days of the pandemic and nationwide protests over police killings. Law enforcement capacity was strained. Courts slowed down to a crawl. Community initiatives stalled. Murder rates surged in ways many cities had not seen in decades. The new data suggests that that period was actually just an aberration during a crazy time of massive social upheaval. And not, thankfully, a permanent shift to a more violent way of living. (Picture: Getty Images)

Since returning to office, President Donald J. Trump has portrayed himself as the law-and-order fix, linking undocumented immigration to rising crime and sending National Guard troops into a number of Democrat-led cities. ‘ICE is removing some of the most violent criminals in the World from our Country,’ Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social earlier this week. A White House spokesperson said: ‘Whether it be deporting criminal illegal aliens, supporting law enforcement officers, or finally being tough on criminals, the Trump Administration has employed a whole-of-government approach to drive down crime and make communities safer.’ (Picture: Getty Images)

Is Trump the cause of the drop in crime?

As much as he’d no doubt like to claim it, it’s a little more complicated than that. Violent crime was already trending down in the final year of President Joe Biden’s term in office. Experts say we should all be wary of simple cause and effect and point out that it’s a complex picture. ‘It’s extremely difficult to disentangle and pinpoint what’s actually driving the drop,’ said Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice. Big shifts in criminal justice policy, new crime-fighting technology, economic changes and cultural factors are all happening at once. Gelb argues that trying to credit one factor too much risks missing the bigger picture. (Picture: Getty Images)

‘There are many more cities that didn’t have the National Guard that saw their crime go down than cities who had the National Guard who saw their crime go down,’ says Alex Piquero, former head of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The numbers can’t really be tied to ICE, either. A New York Times review recently found that only 7% of immigration detainees had a prior conviction for a violent offence. Meanwhile some Democratic leaders have criticised federal deployments, that arguing heavy enforcement merely creates new tensions rather than calms existing ones. (Picture: Getty Images)

What’s driving it this drop in the crime rate?

Criminologists point to what’s a rather messy mix of potential reasons. Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute suggests that demographics and surveillance play a role. ‘Basically the structural factors in society are pushing us towards less crime,’ he said, citing an ageing population, rising obesity and the near-constant presence of cameras. Emily Owens at the University of California postulates that a good chunk of crime (theft, fraud, etc.) has shifted online. She also hypothesises that less physical contact means less violence. ‘The way that people interact with each other has been changing dramatically and becoming much less face-to-face, which is sort of a requirement for violence, right?’ she said. (Picture: Getty Images)

There’s also, of course, the very real possibility that old-fashioned graft might’ve helped some. Many cities, in the past few years, have rolled out hot-spot policing, youth summer jobs, cognitive behavioural therapy and focused deterrence programmes targeting the groups most at risk of committing violence. ‘Cities and states were really throwing everything they had at figuring out how to stop it,’ said Jennifer Doleac of Arnold Ventures. She believes the challenge now is consistency. ‘The question is how do we harness that energy to keep it going, like don’t take our foot off the gas,’ she said. ‘We do have control over our destiny here.’ (Picture: Getty Images)

So, then. Public perception of how prevalent violent crime and murder is slowly seems to be catching up to the stats. In Gallup’s latest survey, 49% of Americans said that crime was worse than the year before. That’s down from 64% in 2024. A substantial drop. Fewer people described crime in their own neighbourhood as ‘extremely serious’ or ‘very serious’. Fewer said they were afraid to walk alone at night. You wouldn’t always know it from what you hear and how people talk about things, but the numbers suggest the US is safer now than it has been in a long, long time. (Picture: Getty Images)

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