The FBI said the U.S. homicide rate fell to 4.1 homicides per 100,000 people in 2025, the lowest level since 1955 and 1956, in crime statistics released Friday. The numbers also showed murder and nonnegligent manslaughter down 18.1% from 2024 to 2025, while overall violent crime dropped 9.3% and property crime fell 12.4% over the same period. The figures come from an apparatus that still depends on voluntary reporting from law enforcement agencies, not a complete picture of life under the badge.
Who Gets Counted, Who Gets Left Out
The FBI said the homicide rate was tied with 1955 and 1956 as the lowest since 1900, when such rates began to be tracked. That long arc of numbers sounds neat enough for a press release. But the report itself says it rests on data reported voluntarily by many, but not all, law enforcement agencies across the country. The state’s own accounting system is partial by design, and the people living under it don’t get to audit the whole machine.
Experts said national violent crime rates have been declining since 2022, but they said it’s difficult to pinpoint a single reason for the drop because multiple factors appear to be involved. Adam Gelb, president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank based in Washington, said, “The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk.” He added, “Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership,” and said, “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.”
Who Takes Credit at the Top
President Donald Trump announced the decreases in the annual crime numbers during a visit to a New York police academy Friday. He said his administration had lowered violent crime rates and criticized his predecessor and so-called sanctuary cities while touting his support for law enforcement and tough-on-crime moves, including deploying the National Guard in Washington and elsewhere. Trump said, “We ended the war on police, and we declared a very strong war on crime.”
That’s the language of command, not community. The numbers may be falling, but the political ritual stays the same: a president standing with police, claiming the credit, and using the moment to sell more force as the answer. The people who live with the consequences of those deployments don’t get a microphone at the academy.
Criminologists who have been tracking violent crime and property crime in a few dozen cities had predicted the homicide rate might drop to 4 per 100,000 residents, which would have made it the lowest since 1900. The FBI said the rate came close to that mark when the numbers from thousands of departments were calculated. The report also said violent and other crime continued to drop during the first six months of 2026, an unusual move for the agency to note before all yearly data are in.
What the Numbers Say, and Don’t Say
The Council on Criminal Justice has said 2026 could see an even larger decline than 2025, with homicides dropping 18% in those cities during the first six months of this year compared with the same period in 2025. Crime surged during the coronavirus pandemic, with homicides increasing nearly 30% in 2020 over the previous year, the largest one-year jump since the FBI began keeping records. Violent crime across the U.S. dipped to near pre-pandemic levels around 2022.
The FBI said it collects standardized crime data through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, though not all agencies participate. The 2025 report included data from more than 17,000 agencies, or more than 87% of the agencies in the FBI’s program, serving communities including almost 329 million Americans. That leaves a familiar gap between the official story and the full reality on the ground. The state counts what it can, when it can, through agencies that answer to the same hierarchy that keeps the whole system running.