Take Early Crime Data Seriously But Not Literally
It's too early and the reporting is too flawed to reach conclusions just yet!
The first update to the Real-Time Crime Index was released last week covering January 2025. This update showed a 15 percent drop in murder, a 13 percent decline in violent crime, and a 15 percent decline in property crime through January 2025 relative to January 2024 in a sample of more than 340 big city and county agencies. More than 92 million Americans are represented in this month’s sample, our biggest sample by population yet.
This update was the first to include over county agencies (mostly sheriffs) representing 40 agencies covering populations of 100,000 or more. These county agencies are responsible for areas in a county not covered by a city police department, so the Los Angeles Police Department covers a good chunk of Los Angeles County while the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office covers another million or so people. Both agencies are included in the RTCI but there is no duplication in reported crimes since each reports only its jurisdiction.
The decline reported in the RTCI sample matches the eye test as big cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St Louis, New Orleans, Denver, and Los Angeles are all reporting large declines in nearly every category of crime so far in 2025.
That said, there are several reasons why it’s probably a bit too early to draw any definitive conclusions about where crime is headed nationally in 2025.
It’s Early — Part I. There are lots of months left in the year and precious little data has been collected. Crime happens disproportionately in the summer each year so January data is particularly ill suited towards evaluating national trends. Crime could be down double digits in January and still rise for the year.
It’s Early - Part II. The RTCI only covers data through January and weird things happen in January. New Orleans got 10 inches of snow! School was shut down for a week! Missing a few days of crime won’t be an issue later in the year but it might impact counts including only January.
Sledding on a levee in New Orleans It’s Early - Part III. There were 529 murders reported in the RTCI sample of 340ish cities in January 2025 compared to 620 in January 2024. That 91 fewer murders in January 2025 produces a large percent change. If the difference in December 2025 is still 91 murders then the percent change will be much smaller because the denominator will be much larger.
It’s Early — Part IV. The biggest reason to be cautious is that agencies tend to underreport the most recent month of data. We try to account for this by auditing reporting to exclude obvious undercounts and we add a 45ish day lag to give agencies time to catch up. This problem is felt most acutely in January when the ratio of underreported months to months of reporting is 1:1. This won’t be an issue later in the year, but as of now it is another reason for caution.
There have been changes to the sample. This month’s sample has a similar number of agencies to last month’s 351, but they’re quite different samples! Many cities struggle with reporting data very early in the year, and some states like Tennessee and Michigan dropped out entirely (Michigan reports 2 out of every 3 months so they’ll be back for the next 2 months). Also, as I mentioned, we’ve added county agencies for the first time which will expand our ability to evaluate crime trends but changes the composition of the sample quite a bit.
Unforeseen factor(s) could lead to changing crime trends later in the year. You may not have noticed this, but America is going through some changes. Consumer sentiment has plunged amidst increasing economic uncertainty. Crime often changes for unknown reasons, but the mid-2020 surge in murder and mid-2022 surge in auto thefts both suggest that a neutral or declining trend can suddenly become a big increase quickly. I’m not saying that will happen, but it does add uncertainty to using such preliminary data to evaluate this year’s crime trends.
My personal take on the first month of data is that crime, including murder, is down a lot though it will take some time to understand just how much. The RTCI is useful for understanding that trend though the usefulness will only increase as the year goes on. If the February data shows the same pattern then we can start more seriously thinking about the nation's crime trends for 2025.