FBI says U.S. homicides fell 18.1% in 2025 to historic low
Preliminary FBI estimates show that murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell 18.1% in the United States from 2024 to 2025, pushing the estimated national homicide rate to 4.1 per 100,000 residents.
That rate is tied with 1955 and 1956 as the lowest in the FBI’s recorded historical series, which begins in 1900. It is a comparison of homicide rates relative to population, not necessarily a comparison of total killings.
The FBI released the early 2025 figures on May 13, 2026. The estimates show broad declines in reported crime, but they are preliminary and can change before the bureau publishes its final Reported Crimes in the Nation, 2025 report later this year.
Homicide and other offenses declined
Overall violent crime fell an estimated 9.3% from 2024 to 2025, according to the FBI’s early annual release. Rape declined 7.6%, robbery fell 18.5% and aggravated assault decreased 7.2%.
Property crime fell an estimated 12.4%. Motor-vehicle theft dropped almost 23%, according to Associated Press reporting on the FBI figures.
The national numbers provide an early picture of crimes reported to participating law-enforcement agencies after the pandemic-era increase in homicides. They do not mean public-safety risks have disappeared or that every community experienced the same change.
How much data are included
The estimates draw on information from more than 17,000 law-enforcement agencies covering about 96% of the U.S. population. More than 15,000 agencies submitted data through the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, covering nearly 90% of the population.
The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer now publishes monthly data, allowing the bureau to release preliminary trends sooner than in the past. The faster schedule improves timeliness, but it also means the early annual figures should be read as an initial estimate rather than a final accounting.
Why the numbers can change
Participation in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program is voluntary for agencies outside the federal system, and not every department reports every month. Agencies are responsible for correcting errors in previously submitted data, and those corrections can be incorporated into later releases.
The FBI says its preliminary trend displays use a three-month delay to give reported data time to stabilize. The 2025 estimates are also subject to revision before the final annual report.
These figures describe crimes known to participating law-enforcement agencies, not every crime that occurred. Crimes that victims do not report to police are not captured in law-enforcement statistics.
Independent data point in the same direction
Independent analysis supports the broad direction of the FBI’s findings. The Council on Criminal Justice’s mid-year 2026 report examined monthly crime data from 36 large U.S. cities. For the 30 cities providing homicide data, reported homicides were 18% lower in the first half of 2026 than in the first half of 2025, a difference of 215 killings.
The council also reported declines in most of the 13 offense categories it studied, including robbery and motor-vehicle theft. But it cautioned that its city sample is not necessarily representative of the nation and that local figures can later be revised.
The cause remains unsettled
The FBI’s figures establish a sharp decline in reported crime; they do not establish why it happened. FBI Director Kash Patel credited changes at the bureau and the Trump administration in the agency’s release, but that is an official claim, not a finding demonstrated by the crime estimates.
Researchers have pointed to multiple possible contributors, including changes in policing and criminal-justice operations, technology, demographics, behavior and local policy. Rates have fallen across jurisdictions with different political leadership and public-safety strategies, making it difficult to assign the national trend to one president, policy or program.
For readers, the immediate takeaway is that reported crime moved sharply lower in 2025, especially homicide and robbery. The next important checkpoints are the FBI’s final annual report and later monthly revisions, which should provide a more settled picture and additional geographic detail.
Sources
- FBI: Historic Early Look at Annual Crime Data
- Associated Press: U.S. homicide rate hits 75-year low
- Council on Criminal Justice: Mid-Year 2026 Crime Trends
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