Murder at Midyear

Assessing the US national murder trend through June 2023

Murder fell in the first half of 2023 though how much it will fall at the end of the year remains to be seen. Murder is down around 11 percent in 100 cities with available data for 2023 per our dashboard. That’s up a bit from where things stood at the end of May but still well down from where things were a few years ago.

The decline in big cities would portend to a 7-10 percent decline nationally in 2023 if that figure holds up given how big cities tend to overstate the national trend. It would also be among the largest declines in murder ever formally recorded.

Murder is falling in a number of big cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia — but it’s also falling in smaller cities with big murder problems. New Orleans likely had the nation’s highest murder rate for any city over 250,000 in 2022 while Jackson, MS likely had the nation’s highest murder rate for any city over 100,000. Murder is still high in both places, but it fell over the first half of the year. The same is true for St Louis and Baltimore, two cities that have had the nation’s highest murder rate at various points over the last decade.

Change in murder, 2023 vs 2022 in cities with large murder rates.

One challenge with guesstimating the national murder trend with only 100 agencies of data is that there are no standardized reporting processes. As a result, several high profile mass killings in big cities in 2022 are not being counted just yet. Data for Buffalo is only available through April, so the May 2022 mass murder by a white supremacist is not included in our total. Additionally, San Antonio counted the June 2022 deaths of 53 migrants in an abandoned tractor-trailer as murders, but data for San Antonio is only available through May.

Another source pointing to a decline in murder is the Gun Violence Archive. Fatal shootings — not counting suicides — are down over 5 percent this year with a large decline year on year in June.

Fatal shooting victims rolling over 12 months (source: Gun Violence Archive)

While the big city sample suggested that the decrease in murder abated in June, data from GVA suggests the decrease got larger. This discrepancy could be better understood with a larger sample of standardized data, alas such a sample does not exist (but that’s a problem for another post).

Percent change in fatal shooting victims relative to same month previous year (source: Gun Violence Archive)

GVA has a solid track record of predicting national trends though it has been on the high side in 5 of the 7 years in which we have GVA totals and national estimates.

Comparing percent change in murder for the Gun Violence Archive vs the FBI.

If GVA is down 5 or 6 percent in 2023 and the big city sample is down 10 to 12 percent then we would have pretty strong evidence of a 8 to 10 percent decline in murder nationally which would be formally confirmed by the FBI when they release 2023 crime data in October 2024 (who is excited for claims of bias if the FBI announces a large drop in murder just weeks before the presidential election?!).

Of course there are still 6 months left in the year so anything could still happen. The available data continues to point to a large decline in murder nationally though just how big the decline will be will be determined by what happens over the next few months.