Murders plummeted more than 20% in U.S. last year, the largest drop on record, study shows
Murders plummeted more than 20% in 2025 from the year before, the single-largest one-year drop on record — and it might be the lowest murder rate in the U.S. since 1900, a study released Thursday by the Council on Criminal Justice found.
The annual crime trends report analyzed data from 40 large cities across the United States for 13 different crime types, including murder, carjacking, theft and drug offenses.
Alongside homicides, which dropped 21% from 2024, carjackings have declined 61% since 2023, while shoplifting is down 10% since 2024. In general, the overall crime rate declined, with violent crimes at or below levels seen in 2019, the analysis found — drug offenses were the only category that rose during this period, while sexual assault remained even.
Researchers pointed toward multiple reasons for the large drop in homicides, but cautioned that "identifying decisive factors with certainty is challenging."
Senior research specialist Ernesto Lopez, lead author of the report, said that while the "overall reduction in crime, especially homicide, is welcome news," he noted homicide rates had been steadily dropping since the late 2000s, prior to a notable spike in 2020.
"It is possible that these rates reflect a longer-term downward trend punctuated by periods of elevated homicides," Lopez said.
The cities — which included New York, Philadelphia, Omaha, Nebraska, and Raleigh, North Carolina, among others — were selected based on the availability of crime statistics at the time of data collection in early January 2026.
While data varied between cities, researchers said there were 25% fewer homicides in 2025 compared to 2019, with rates dropping in 27 of 35 cities in the sample.
Richmond, Virginia, saw a drop of 59%, Los Angeles saw a drop of 39% and New York City dropped by 10%. Homicide rates in some cities remained stable and several other cities saw reductions of under 5%.
Atlanta Police Chief Darren Schierbaum said Tuesday at a news conference that his city has seen a dramatic decrease in shootings since 2022. He said the department recorded under 100 homicides in 2025 for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic. CCJ data recorded a drop of 14% in Atlanta's murders in 2025 from the previous year.
Schierbaum said a fair number of murders in Atlanta were the result of "escalating dispute," and called on the community to consider "conflict resolution."
A group of criminal justice experts convened by CCJ had varied answers as to what caused such a precipitous drop in homicides, but they were generally in agreement that the stabilization of routines, an influx of COVID-19 relief funds and program intervention were strong drivers.
"Many cities focused enforcement and prevention on the small number of neighborhoods and groups driving a large share of shootings, improved shooting investigations, and got the courts moving again," said Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University, and a former Memphis police official.
He added that informal guardianship returned to the streets, saying bystanders and community presence can help defuse conflicts before they escalate.
"But national averages can hide what is happening in some neighborhoods. The key question is which neighborhoods are sustaining gains, and which are not," Johnson said.
