Homicides Drop 18.1% in 2025 to Lowest Rate Since 1956

The United States recorded its lowest homicide rate in 75 years during 2025, according to the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Reporting Program report released Friday. The homicide rate fell to 4.1 per 100,000 people, tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest since the agency began keeping records, while overall violent crime dropped 9.3% — the largest year-to-year decrease since the FBI began tabulating such figures in 1936.

Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter decreased 18.1% between 2024 and 2025, with an estimated 14,085 murders nationwide. Property crime declined 12.4% during the same period, and motor vehicle theft dropped by nearly 23% to the lowest levels in more than two decades. The report, compiled from data submitted by more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies serving nearly 329 million Americans, marks the third consecutive year of record declines in murder.

A Historic Decline Across Every Major Category

The FBI’s report showed declines across virtually every crime category. Robbery decreased 18.5%, rapes declined 7.6%, and aggravated assaults fell 7.2% from 2024. Burglary decreased 15.8%, and hate crimes fell 7% overall, from 11,404 incidents in 2024 to 10,606 in 2025.

Cities between 500,000 and 1 million residents saw the largest drops in serious crime, with murders falling by 27%, robbery by 23%, rape by 18%, and violent crime by 15%. The decline builds on 2024’s progress, when violent crime fell 4.5% and murder and nonnegligent manslaughter decreased 14.9%, according to the previous year’s report.

Not all data was positive. Assaults on law enforcement officers hit a 10-year high, with 90,178 officers assaulted in the line of duty in 2025 — up 13.8% from the prior year — and 53 officers were feloniously killed. The FBI also noted, in an unusual move, that violent and other crime has continued to drop during the first six months of 2026, suggesting the trend may extend into a fourth year.

Trump Claims Credit Amid Political Battleground

President Donald Trump announced the figures during a visit to the Nassau County Police Academy in Garden City, New York, where he framed the decline as validation of his administration’s tough-on-crime approach. “We ended the war on police, and we declared a very strong war on crime,” Trump said, according to AP News. “We achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history.”

FBI Director Kash Patel, who appeared alongside Attorney General Todd Blanche at the event, said the 2025 murder rate “is tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest rate since FBI estimations began.” Their appearance at an overtly political event — designed in part to boost Republican candidates ahead of the November midterms — broke longstanding norms in which the nation’s law enforcement generally steered clear of participating in political events.

Trump’s visit to Nassau County was aimed at supporting Republican challengers in closely contested races, including Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s bid to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul. Trump narrowly won the county in 2024, flipping it to Republicans for the first time in more than two decades. Republican strategist Matt Gorman said crime is an issue where the party feels comfortable going on offense: “On the strategic level, crime is an issue that Republicans feel comfortable going on offense with, where the country kind of broadly agrees with them.”

Experts Caution Against Attributing a Single Cause

While the political debate intensifies, criminologists and policy researchers emphasize that the reasons for the decline are complex and multifaceted. Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, cautioned against handing credit to any single leader or policy. “The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear,” Gelb said. “But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk.”

Gelb noted that rates are falling across cities with vastly different political leadership, economic conditions, and public safety strategies. “The consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up,” he told USA Today. “Homicide has now fallen by more than half since 2022. That means lives saved, families spared trauma, and communities made safer — and it deserves to be celebrated.”

Experts point to a range of potential contributing factors. John Roman, director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at NORC at the University of Chicago, noted that conservative politicians will point to intensified immigration crackdowns and National Guard deployments, while liberal politicians may cite the previous administration’s public safety legislation that strengthened background checks on firearm sales. But Roman said the best explanations transcend specific administrations, ranging from decreased drug usage to an influx of federal funding for localities after the pandemic that was spent on social programming.

Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor of criminology at Georgia State University and former police official in Memphis, told CBS News that police became smarter and started sharing more data during the pandemic, and that violence reduction programs have helped. He cautioned that it is still too early to know if these drops will continue. “We need to think not only about 10 days but also 10 years from now,” Johnson said.

Local Success Stories and Persistent Challenges

City-level data illustrates both the breadth of the decline and the variation across communities. In Buffalo, New York, the homicide rate fell 48% between 2019 and 2025, with year-to-date homicides down another 33% in 2026. Homicide detective Mark Costantino, a 27-year veteran of the Buffalo Police, attributes the success to “outstanding teamwork” and the integration of new investigative technologies such as cellphone triangulation and video surveillance. Denver saw homicide cases decline 48% in 2025 compared to 2024, with police crediting focused efforts in high-crime areas and firearm removal.

However, the picture is not uniformly positive. Norfolk, Virginia, saw a 64% increase in homicides in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025, and San Francisco saw a 55% increase. Austin, Texas, had the largest increase in homicides (74%) compared to 2019 levels.

A Promising Trajectory for 2026

The Council on Criminal Justice’s mid-year report released in July found an 18% drop in homicides in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025 across 30 cities, suggesting the national homicide rate could reach another historic low this year. Jeff Asher, co-founder of the data analytics firm AH Datalytics, told NBC News that “this release confirms that crime in the U.S. is falling at or near a historic clip. This is the third straight year of a record drop in murder and the data for 2026 points to a continued large drop this year.”

The Council on Criminal Justice is convening a two-day summit in September 2026 of researchers from criminology, economics, psychology, sociology, and public health to examine what may be driving the homicide decline. The council has also commissioned a series of research briefs examining more than a dozen potential contributing factors.

As the midterm elections approach, the crime statistics are likely to remain a central political battleground. But for communities across the country, the numbers represent a tangible improvement in public safety. “This is one of the most significant public safety developments in decades,” Gelb said. “It means lives are being saved, families are spared trauma and communities are regaining stability.”

The key question moving forward is whether the decline represents a durable shift or a temporary reprieve. With preliminary 2026 data showing continued decreases, the evidence so far suggests the trend may have staying power — even as the reasons behind it remain a subject of intense debate.