Crime in 2024: A Historic Drop in Murder with Declining Violent and Property Crime

America’s crime trends in 2024 were remarkably positive with an enormous decline in murder, a continued small but steady decline in violent crime, and a sizable decline in motor vehicle theft on the heels of several years of surges. The nation’s murder rate has largely erased the post-COVID surge and was roughly around or 2019’s level while reported violent and property crime were likely amongst the lowest rates recorded since the 1960s and 1970s. This assessment is based on an evaluation of data from multiple official and unofficial data sources all painting the same picture.

(Note: the raw figures in this chart were initially pasted wrong into Datawrapper, I’ve since fixed the error and these figures are correct).

Murder likely fell at the fastest rate ever recorded in 2024 after falling at the fastest rate ever recorded in 2023 based on an assessment of 2024 crime data from numerous sources. The Real-Time Crime Index has murder down 16 percent in 309 cities with available data through October 2024, the FBI has murder down 23 percent through June (though it’s almost certainly overstating the decline), the CDC has homicide down 14 percent through May (provisional count), and the Gun Violence Archive has fatal shootings down more than 11 percent as of mid-December.

Not every city in America is experienced a decline this year, and even cities with sharp declines have massive room for continued improvement. Still, the data from many individual cities is remarkable.

As of late November, murder was down more than 40 percent in Philadelphia through late November, down 23 percent in Memphis, down 38 percent in New Orleans, down 15 percent in Los Angeles (where murder was up as of midyear), down 29 percent in DC, down 24 percent in Baltimore, down 20 percent in Kansas City, and I could go on.

Murder was down 15 percent in 63 cities of 250,000 or more in the RTCI and it’s down 19 percent in 246 cities of under 250,000 people through October suggesting that the decline is robust across population sizes. There are 40 cities in the RTCI reporting a double-digit decline in murder while just eight cities are reporting a double-digit increase.

Murders in the RTCI are down 26 percent through the end of October 2024 relative to the same timeframe in 2021. They are up a around 6 percent relative to the first 10 months of 2019 and that gap is shrinking. Below is a guesstimate of what the murder count and rate back to 1960 would look like factoring in a major decline of around 14 percent in 2024. This year’s murder rate could come in a bit higher or lower than this graph suggests, but the general picture shouldn’t change all that much when the FBI’s official estimates are released next Fall. Remember that the 2021 estimate is not reliable and is there as a placeholder.

A roughly 14 percent decline in murder this year (just a conservative guess) would also eclipse last year in terms of the count of fewer murders from one year to the next. This is just a guess though given that 2023’s numbers may still be revised and the decline in 2024 is far from certain.

The rapid decline in murder has led to more than 5,000 fewer murder victims this year compared to the 2020 to 2022 years. That’s an achievement that should be recognized, appreciated, and studied.

Other trends in reported crime are similarly positive — although not quite to the same degree.

The reported property crime trend is fairly clear with the RTCI showing a nearly 9 percent decline this year helped along by plunging motor vehicle thefts. Much property crime goes unreported (other than motor vehicle thefts), so it’s hard to know just how reliable a decline in reported property crime is. But reported property crime is at or near historic lows in both FBI and BJS data, so a decline again in 2024 should extend that positive position.

The previous largest one-year decline in reported property crime came in 2020 at 7.4 percent. That drop was largely driven by the pandemic, but 2024 still has a chance to have the largest reported property crime decline ever recorded.

The driver is motor vehicle thefts which are finally falling after four straight years of rising. Motor vehicle thefts were down more than 20 percent in the RTCI with huge declines in a number of cities. The drop in motor vehicle theft is fairly constant regardless of city size, unlike last year when there was a major gap between small and big cities in terms of increasing car thefts. This suggests the decline should be fairly steep in 2024 after several years of large increases.

Overall, reported property crime is at the lowest level and rate since the 1960s (excluding 2021). A large share of property crimes don’t get reported each year, but property crimes have declined substantially even in NCVS relative to where they stood 15 to 30 years ago.

The reported violent crime trend points to a more subtle drop than we are seeing with property crimes. The RTCI has violent crime down 3.3 percent through October suggesting reported violent crime likely fell just a bit this year and remains at or near the historic lows reached in 2014, 2019, and 2023.

If it did drop a few percentage points then the national reported violent crime rate for 2024 should be the lowest since 1970, though slight upward revisions to 2022 data and “human error” in Oakland robbed 2023 of that title by a razor-thin margin. It’s hard to predict exactly how these figures could shake out given that the percent change with reported violent crime is much more slight than the murder or property crime changes.

We won’t know what NCVS shows for 2024 until next Fall, but I’m guessing it will also show a slight decline in violent crime given that the two measures tend to agree over time. Regardless, the narrative of violent crime (both reported and surveyed) is that it has fallen a ton since the 90s, a fair amount from the 2000s and has been largely steady at this relatively low level for most of the last 15 years.

Not every crime gets reported, and not every concern that gets lumped into the “crime” bucket is inherently criminal or fits the definition of a major crime as measured by the FBI. Overall, the trends in reported major crime in America are positive even if Americans don’t totally believe it.

It’s not fully clear whether the record-breaking declines in murder seen in 2023 and 2024 will continue into 2025. That said, hopefully people can appreciate the fact that there were likely more than 5,000 fewer murder victims in America in 2024 than each year in 2020, 2021, and 2022 even while acknowledging that more than 16,000 murder victims nationwide is far too many tragedies. Yes it is progress and yes we can still strive to do better.

The decline in murder was likely accompanied by a sharp drop in reported property crime and a slight decrease in reported violent crime. Intelligent people can (and will) disagree about the causes of and preferred policy solutions to these issues, but there should be little doubt about the overall direction of major crime in America in 2024.

And with that, attention turns to 2025 to see what the new year brings for the nation’s crime trends.