Murder Officially Plunged in 2024

That and more takeaways from the FBI's 2024 Reported Crime in the Nation report.

The FBI released its report on crime in the United States for 2024 today showing a 14.9 percent decline in murder with 4.4 percent and 8.1 percent drops in overall violent and property crime respectively. The nation’s murder rate for 2024 was down 26 percent from 2020’s figure and roughly even — slightly lower, actually — relative to where it stood pre-pandemic. The nation’s reported violent and property crime rates stood at the lowest levels since the 1960s in 2024.

Crime fell in 2024 across every category and population group. Seriously. Crime was down in all seven categories of crime across all 10 population groups that the FBI measures.

Before digging deeper, I do have a few standard data caveats. Not every crime is reported to law enforcement and not every agency reports crime to the FBI every year. This point is driven home by the FBI changing the official name of this report from Crime in the Nation to Reported Crime in the Nation.

These are estimates that will be revised next year which is a totally normal part of the process. We can accurately convey crime trends even if precision is better left to baseball.

More specifically, crime totals for this piece use the FBI’s CIUS Table 1 for counts and rates over the last 20 years. I’ve written a few times about using this table and how its figures may differ from counts and rates published elsewhere on the Crime Data Explorer, in case you’re interested. Additionally, violent crimes are derived for this assessment using the FBI’s legacy definition of rape. This allows for an apples-to-apples comparison of data from 1960 to present but means the numbers and rates reported elsewhere by the FBI may be off slightly (I have violent crime down 4.4% compared to being down 4.5% using the revised definition).

Now, back to the analysis.

Murder

That murder fell nearly 15 percent should come as no surprise to regular readers of Jeff-alytics. The most recent sample of the Real-Time Crime Index showed a 14.4 percent decline in 2024 from 2023 and both the CDC and Gun Violence Archive pointed to a double-digit percentage point decline as well. That’s the fastest drop in murder ever recorded, eclipsing 2023’s 10 percent decline (which was expectedly revised from a nearly 12 percent decline a bit).

The nation’s murder rate in 2024 of 5 per 100,000 is the lowest recorded since 2015. Murder declined across every population group as reported by the FBI with a 19 percent drop in cities of 1 million or more and a…19 percent drop in cities under 10,000.

The 2024 data adds confidence that 2025 will feature the lowest murder rate ever recorded. A decline of around 10 percent in 2025 would place this year even with 2014 as the lowest murder rate ever recorded. Any larger decline in 2025 would give this year the “record”. Data from the RTCI puts it at down 20 percent through May. In other words, the odds that 2025 will have the lowest murder rate ever recorded have gone from ‘plausible’ to ‘more likely than not’.

Violent Crime

Overall violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) fell 4.4 percent in 2024 with the nation’s violent crime rate reaching 359.1 per 100,000. That’s the lowest national violent crime rate recorded since 1969. Note that these graphs use the FBI’s legacy definition of rape to consistently measure the changing violent crime rate over time.

Of note, while murder, rape, and robbery have declined well below pre-COVID levels, aggravated assault — which accounts for over 70 percent of UCR Part I violent crimes — fell only 3 percent in 2024 and remains stubbornly higher than it was pre-COVID. On the plus side, the Real-Time Crime Index shows a pretty substantial drop in aggravated assault is in progress in 2025.

Property Crime

Overall property crime (burglary, theft, and motor vehicle theft) fell 8.1 percent in 2024 with the nation’s property crime rate reaching 1,760 per 100,000. That’s the lowest property crime rate recorded in the US since 1961. The 8.1 percent drop is the largest one-year decline ever recorded eclipsing the 7.4 percent decline recorded in 2020 (though the difference is pretty minimal considering how these numbers can get revised).

A 19 percent drop in motor vehicle theft powered a fair amount of the decline in property crimes though these crimes remain more plentiful than they were in 2019. Still, the drop in motor vehicle thefts was the largest one-year decline ever recorded, beating a 16.9 percent drop in 2009. As shown on the RTCI, auto theft has been plunging since peaking at the end of 2023 with an even larger drop apparently in store for 2025, so 2024’s record may be short-lived.

How’d The Real-Time Crime Index Do?

Great! Beyond great.

The February 2025 RTCI sample (released in March 2025) had murder down 14 percent, violent crime down 4 percent, and property crime down 8 percent in 2024 compared to 2023. The current sample (released in July 2025) has murder falling 14 percent, violent crime falling 3.5 percent, and property crime falling slightly less than 8 percent in 2024 compared to 2023. That’s a pretty consistent picture of US crime trends considering the imperfections in the data and the changing sample.

In my year-end writeup in mid-December 2024 I wrote:

“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.”

I would use those exact same words today to describe US crime trends in 2024. The goal of the RTCI and similar projects is to accurately portray US crime trends as they develop. Perfection is never going to be possible in this field, but it’s very nerdishly (inventing a word here) exciting to be able to be so accurate so quickly.

Clearances

Clearance rates have now improved in consecutive years after plummeting in 2020. Much of this is likely due to crime falling which tends to push clearance rates higher which you can read all about here. Property crime clearance rates remain pretty anemic though murder clearance rates have roughly returned to where they were pre-COVID.

Participation

Participation in UCR has fully returned to “normal” with 95.6 percent of the US population covered by an agency reporting data. Between 95 and 98 percent of the US population was covered each year prior to the NIBRS switch in 2021.

That was followed with a very abnormal year in 2021 that I’ve covered at length in this newsletter. Coverage nearly returned to normal in 2022 though full coverage (12 months of reporting) was somewhat low by historical standards. Participation increased close to the pre-NIBRS level in 2023 and was firmly in the normal category in 2024.

Of note, NIBRS coverage made another large leap in 2024. Nearly 90 percent (87.2 percent) of the country was covered by a NIBRS agency in 2024, up from less than 30 percent in 2015. The road was bumpy but near-total NIBRS compliance is nearly upon us.

I’m not sure if people still are trying to blame agencies not reporting for the crime rate dropping but there simply remains zero evidence whatsoever to substantiate that claim.

What to Make of an Early Report

The FBI’s release comes about 7 weeks earlier than normal which I take as a clear sign of improving internal processing capabilities of crime data. The key challenge for the FBI has always been having to wait until the April 2025 deadline to get most data from agencies, but that information is sent to the FBI much faster thanks to NIBRS-related infrastructure.

The FBI plans to start releasing monthly data later this month which will be very good but will also carry lots of potential pitfalls. These monthly releases will have so many caveats and issues that I started a post last November titled “The 10 Do's and 500 Don'ts of the FBI's New Monthly Data.” Still, monthly data from the FBI would do wonders for projects like the Real-Time Crime Index and seriously enhance the speed of our understanding of crime trends.

Concluding Thoughts

Knowing the 2024 estimated crime counts and rates is great, but private groups like the Real-Time Crime Index, Council on Criminal Justice and NORC’s Live Crime Tracker have made it possible to know our current the trends without having to wait until the second half of 2025. It’s valuable to understand and be able to respond to our crime trends as they change.

It’s also valuable to have reasonably firm national estimates of how many crimes were reported to law enforcement each year. We know that not every crime gets reported, but these foibles are a prerequisite to working with crime data.

The bottom line is that reported crime fell in 2024 led by massive drops in both murder and motor vehicle theft. With last year’s initial estimates firmly in hand, attention can now shift to how these downward trends are accelerating as we approach the end of summer 2025.

The FBI’s 2024 estimates drive home that the nation’s murder rate really could set a record low in 2025. What felt almost unthinkable five years ago is by no means certain, but it’s definitely thinkable.