Will Murder Fall Again in 2026?
Gazing into the crystal ball
I wrote a prediction column for 2025 in December 2024 which, re-reading now, reminded me of my favorite joke from one of my favorite TV shows of all time: Derry Girls. During the first season finale, two girls sing badly during the school talent show. Sister Michael, played brilliantly by Siobhán McSweeney, comes out to introduce the next act and brilliantly roasts the previous act:
Anyhow, re-reading my 2025 predictions is a good reminder of just how hard predicting future crime trends can be!
I made 3 overarching predictions for 2025:
The Great Murder Decline Levels Off.
Violent Crime Is Largely Even.
Property Crime Keeps Falling.
Folks, there are more than 100 Major League Hall-of-Famers who didn’t hit 0.333 in their career. That includes legends like Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, and Old Hoss Rasbourn. So going 1 for 3 in my predictions is not so bad!
What we actually saw was an even more dramatic drop in murder, violent crime, and property crime than we had seen in 2024. At least I got the property crime prediction right!
So, what does 2026 have in store?
The obvious answer is that I do not know! But since this is a prediction column, I guess I can make a prediction. And I’m going to limit it just to murder because I at least feel decently okay about assessing that future direction.
I think that murder will likely fall again in 2026 but that the drop won’t be as large as what we have seen over the last few years.
There were around 2,000 fewer murder victims in the US in 2023 than there were in 2022. Then there were around 2,500 fewer murders in 2024 than in 2023 (assuming the 2024 count is revised upwards by the FBI when the 2025 data is released next year). Then there were around 3,000 fewer murder victims this year than last based on a 17 percent drop from 2024 levels (could be bigger or smaller).
At this rate of decline there will be zero murders in the United States in the early 2030s. Call me a pessimist, but I find that unlikely. At some point, therefore, this trend will start to level off and return to more historical norms of small gains and losses each year.
There isn’t super strong evidence that such a levelling off has started. Comparing the percent change per month versus the same month last year in the Gun Violence Archive data points to a sustained drop that maybe is getting less big if you squint.
Had we done this exercise at the end of 2019 we probably would have guessed that murder would rise in 2020 based on the increasing fatal shootings in the GVA over the latter half of 2019. Obviously this wouldn’t have predicted the huge surge that occurred in 2020, but gun violence was plainly rising in the United States prior to that.
One thing that this chart drives home is how the huge drop in 2025 simply built on a trend that started several years ago. Ascribing any policy choices made in 2025 (or even 2024 for that matter) as an answer to why murder and violent crime have fallen is like this heroic man making the subway trains stop and go.
The Real-Time Crime Index doesn’t point to any obvious clues of a levelling off either. More than half of all the agencies in the October sample of the RTCI had declining murder in 2025 compared to 2024 and 73 percent of agencies were even or down. Less than a quarter of agencies had a drop in 2020, by contrast.
A leveling off in gun violence is a bit more obvious looking at shooting data in individual cities that publish it. Below I grabbed data from 5 cities that publish data (victim level in Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia and Boston, incident level in New Orleans) plus data from the original 20 agencies of New York’s Gun Involved Violence Elimination (GIVE) program.
A potential levelling off in 2025 is a bit more obvious in these cities giving credence to the idea that murder will fall less — or not at all — in 2026. Or this may just be a small subset of cities with a levelling off while other cities buck the trend.
All told, I predict a smaller drop in murder in 2026 (compared to 2023-2025) rather than no change or an increase. We will likely see murder increase in more cities than we did this year, but another drop overall is more likely than not given how there are lots of places that are still dropping from still-elevated levels.
There is no evidence that murder is rising, and 2025’s likely record for the lowest recorded murder rate will more likely than not get broken in 2026 even with a smaller drop. But I’m guessing we’ll see a much more normal percent change next year nationally.
We probably won’t see a fourth straight record drop in murder in 2026, but another year of the lowest murder rate ever recorded is certainly possible. And, if I’m wrong, there are plenty of Hall of Fame hitters who only batter .250! (Fine, yes, they’re all pitchers)
It will be a few months, however, before 2026’s crime trends begin to take shape.
Thanks, Jeff. Somewhere along the line, we need to inquire as to the reasons for the drop in reported crime. Best, Len.
Outstanding reference to Old Hoss Radbourn's batting prowess.