Crime Keeps Falling. When Will Voters Believe It?

The Major Cities Chiefs Association reported recently that, in the 69 large US cities and counties from which it received data, violent crime was down 6.1% in the first half of 2024 compared with the same period a year earlier, and homicides were down 17.4%. A Council on Criminal Justice analysis of data from 39 cities that have been consistently reporting monthly crime statistics for the past six years found that homicides, robberies and aggravated assaults were all down in the first half of this year relative not just to last year but to the first half of 2019. In the 277 cities from which AH Datalytics collects high-frequency data, murders were down 17.6% as of mid-August relative to the same period last year — a decline that if it (1) holds up for the full year and (2) turns out to be representative of murders nationwide would mean the national murder rate would have retraced all of its rise in 2020 and 2021 and then some.1

Next month, we’ll likely get similar or perhaps even better news from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s quarterly crime report — recent editions of which have shown steeper crime declines than the Major Cities reports — and the new Real-Time Crime Index to be unveiled by AH Datalytics with data from hundreds of local police departments. Also due out this fall are the FBI’s final 2023 crime statistics from more than 15,000 police and sheriff’s departments nationwide. The 2022 edition showed violent crime down 1.7% and property crime up 7.1% from the previous year, while preliminary 2023 data showed both declining, 5.7% and 4.3% respectively.