A recent report found that 2025 experienced a record-breaking fall in crime across America’s cities. The Council of Criminal Justice looked at updated crime reports in 40 U.S. cities, finding homicide crime, for instance, dropping 21% from the year before and 44% since 2021 when it last peaked, making the national homicide rate the lowest it’s been since 1900.
The report predicts that when the Federal Bureau of Investigation releases its nationwide data, homicide numbers will show 4.0 per 100,000 residents, marking 2025 as experiencing the largest single-year percentage drop in homicide rates ever recorded.
The report also found the following percentage fall in offenses last year:
- 9% fewer reported aggravated assaults
- 22% fewer gun assaults
- 2% fewer domestic violence incidents
- Overall robbery fell by 23%, and carjackings decreased by 43%
The decrease in crime in 2025 was similar to or below the stats seen in 2019, the year before crime increased during the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide protests surrounding Black Lives Matter.
Of the 13 crimes studied in the report, 11 were lower in 2025 than in 2024, nine of which declined by 10% or more. The only offense that increased — by 7% — was drug crimes. Sexual assault saw no change.
What caused the decrease in crime?
Experts on the report point to several reasons for the decline in offenses, concluding there is no single explanation.
“We’re seeing big swings in criminal justice policies, programs, and rhetoric, big advances in crime-fighting technologies, and big social, economic, and cultural shifts all happening at the same time,” CCJ President and CEO Adam Gelb said in a press release. “It’s extremely difficult to disentangle and pinpoint what’s actually driving the drop. As a result, we have a battle of sound bites and abundant claims of credit but scarce hard evidence to back them up.”
Following the release of the report, the Trump administration took a victory lap, claiming it was the president’s “unwavering commitment to Make America Safe again.”
The White House pointed the finger at Democrats for “coddling criminals and opening our borders”:
“Since taking office, President Trump has deployed a whole-of-government offensive in Democrat-run cities, driving down crime, ridding the streets of savage criminal illegal aliens, backing law enforcement, and bringing back order where incompetent Democrat politicians surrendered to anarchy and despair."
Tesla founder and former Trump adviser Elon Musk posted on social media, crediting the decrease in crime to the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. “Turns out that jailing or deporting repeat violent offenders greatly reduces the murder rate,” he said.
But study experts appeared to view the change from work done at the local government level, and the likelihood of it continuing in this downward trajectory is uncertain.
“The homicide decline likely reflects several forces moving in the same direction, not one magic solution. Criminal justice factors mattered. Many cities focused enforcement and prevention on the small number of neighborhoods and groups driving a large share of shootings, improved shooting investigations, and got the courts moving again,” Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow at CCJ, said.
He added that “as the pandemic period eased, daily routines normalized, more people were out and about, and informal guardianship returned — more ‘eyes on the street,’ bystanders, and community presence that can help defuse conflicts before they escalate. But national averages can hide what is happening in some neighborhoods. The key question is which neighborhoods are sustaining gains, and which are not.”