Murder rate in the United States drops 20% over a year, possibly the biggest decline ever.

 

Chart from RTCI showing the decline in murders. New York Post.

The murder rate in the United States has dropped an unprecedented 20% in 2025. New York Post. Between January and October in 2024 the United States had 7,369 murders but during the same time period in 2025 only 5,912 occurred. The figures include homicides, but exclude manslaughter, justified homicide and accidental killings. The collapse was mirrored in large cities like Chicago, New York, Washington DC and Los Angeles, all of which had double digit lower rates of homicide. Mass murders too declined to a rate not seen since 2006. The rate had already begun to drop with 2024 seeing a 15% decrease compared to 2023, when the pandemic era highs started to drop. Other crimes, like aggravated assault and car theft has decreased as well. 

My Comment:

In order to figure out why the crime rate has finally started to decline, we have to understand why in boomed out of control in the first place. Much of the blame can be placed on the Biden administration and Black Lives Matter. Both pushed major police reforms that punished police for doing their jobs and did everything in their power to ensure that more criminals were let out with things like lower sentences and bail reform. 

This, combined with the economic and social effects of the pandemic, caused crime to explode. Some of that happened during Trump's first time, a consequence of not cracking down on the BLM insurrection, but Biden and his administration saw the reforms that big city Democrats had put into place and put them into place nationally. 

This was, predictably, a disaster. Police were too afraid arrest criminals due to fear of getting prosecuted like Dereck Chauvin was. Bail reform allowed so many criminals to continue to commit crimes while awaiting the justice system. And Biden threw open the gates to illegal immigration, which led to a huge amount of 100% preventable crimes. 

Some of these policies were reversed or at least toned down as Biden and the Democrats apparently realized how badly it was playing for them. They kept some, they never did a single thing to try and reduce illegal immigration, but this reversal was the reason the crime rate started to drop between 2023 and 2024. 

President Trump pretty much reversed everything that was left. He cracked down on crime in big cities to the point where he deployed the national guard. He also deported quite a few of the worst of the worst of illegal immigrants and convinced a lot more of them to go home themselves, around 2.5 million by most estimates combined. 

I think there was also a major psychological impact as well. Folks understood that there wasn't much reason not to be a criminal under Joe Biden. Everyone knew the police were emasculated and hindered while the Democratic Party seemed to be directly supporting Criminals. Trump ran as a law and order President and that obviously changed the idea that you could easily get away with crime. This probably didn't have a huge effect, but I do think it is real.   

Critics are saying that this is just a regression to the mean. Of course that is somewhat true, but it ignores why the crime rate exploded in the first place. Democrats deserve the credit for that for sure. But I do think that Trump's policies are at least somewhat responsible for the crime rate dropping. Like I always say, every crime committed by a illegal alien is a preventable, so it obviously follows that getting rid of illegal aliens is a great way to reduce crimes.