How Many Murders Were There In New York City Last Year?

Making sense of confusing and conflicting crime data.

The FBI and NYPD reported that there were 386 murders in New York City in 2023 according to both the FBI and NYPD. The FBI also reports that there were 345 murders in New York City last year. And NYPD also reports 351 murders last year.

Confused yet?

Good, let’s dive in.

New York City reported 386 murders in 2023, saying in a press release on January 4th, 2024 that “Murders – which rose for four consecutive years before the current administration was installed – fell by 11.9% (386 vs. 438) in 2023 compared to 2022.” If you use the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer’s Data Discovery Tool you get the same count, and the CDE’s Explorer Page also gives 386 if you add up all the months.

That seems like a pretty straightforward answer. But if it was that straightforward then I probably wouldn’t be writing about it.

If you download the Crime in the US Offenses Known to Law Enforcement report (see below) you’ll see New York City reported 345 murders, and if you open up each of the monthly press releases (see January here) that the city put out in 2023 you get 351 murders which is fairly close to the 345 eventually reported to the FBI. (And an eagle-eyed reader points out that NYPD's annual tally shows 391 murders in 2023). It's certainly plausible that 6 murders reported in monthly reports over the course of the year were changed to something else.

Comparing the three sources (the CDE by month, the Crime in the US by month, and NYC’s own reporting) shows very little agreement on a monthly basis though the FBI’s CIUS totals and the NYC press releases are close in the aggregate.

To understand why the counts are different you’ve got to remember that while every murder is a homicide but not every homicide is a murder. The FBI’s offense definition of homicide is divided into three categories — murder, justifiable homicide, and manslaughter:

“Criminal homicide―a.) Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter: the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another. Deaths caused by negligence, attempts to kill, assaults to kill, suicides, and accidental deaths are excluded. The program classifies justifiable homicides separately and limits the definition to: (1) the killing of a felon by a law enforcement officer in the line of duty; or (2) the killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen. b.) Manslaughter by negligence: the killing of another person through gross negligence.”

So the FBI is reporting homicides on the CDE but if you download the table of crime by city (Table 8) you get just murders. This is important because we can’t really tell from the FBI data just how far murder fell in 2023. NYPD reported 2 total manslaughter offenses to the FBI between 2017 and 2021, 4 in 2022 and then 41 in 2023.

Going back to 1960, New York City’s manslaughter count has been wonky for a few decades. The jump to 41 likely comes because NYPD transitioned to NIBRS in 2023 and is reporting these offenses more systemically. Of course, that explanation goes out the window if 2024’s manslaughter count falls back to the single digits when it is eventually reported.

It’s ultimately impossible to say which total is the *right* total in terms of specifically murders each year. Murder did not fall from 438 in 2022 to 345 in 2023, but it's hard to say exactly how many murders there were in 2022. It seems most likely that New York has been combining murders and manslaughters in its reporting to the FBI, so when using NYPD’s data it may be wise to stick with homicides over time for the sake of consistency.

This issue hopefully highlights how confusing crime data can be and how important definitional precision can be to accurately portraying crime trends.