Murders across the United States dropped nearly 13% in 2023 — a decline so sharp that analysts say it ranks among the fastest on record. The fall came after a brutal pandemic-era spike, and it extended well beyond homicides, touching nearly every major category of violent and property crime.
At a glance
- Homicide decline: Murders fell 12.8% across more than 175 U.S. cities in 2023, according to criminal justice data analyzed by AH Analytics.
- Violent crime drop: Preliminary FBI data showed seven of eight categories of violent and property crime were down across cities of all sizes through the first three quarters of 2023.
- Major city gains: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago each recorded double-digit homicide declines — 11.42%, 15.45%, and 12.7% respectively — as of late December 2023 C.E.
What the data shows
The numbers come from AH Analytics, a criminal justice data firm whose co-founder Jeff Asher analyzed local law enforcement records from across the country. Writing on Substack, Asher described the trend as suggesting U.S. murders were on pace to log “one of the fastest rates of decline ever recorded.”
The FBI’s own preliminary third-quarter data backed that picture. Of eight tracked categories of violent and property crime, seven were down — the lone exception being car thefts, which continued to rise.
“The quarterly data shows violent crime down in big cities, small cities, suburban counties, and rural counties, pretty much across the board,” Asher wrote. “The decline in crime shown in the quarterly data — if realized — would be historically large.”
Why the turnaround matters
The drop is especially meaningful in context. Between 2019 C.E. and 2020 C.E., the U.S. murder rate rose 30% — one of the largest single-year increases on record, though still below the historic peaks of the 1990s. The pandemic years frayed community ties, disrupted institutions, and strained law enforcement in ways experts are still working to understand.
The rebound is real, and its speed surprised analysts. Cities that had been held up as cautionary tales about rising crime saw some of the sharpest reversals. Across New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, homicide counts fell by double digits within a single year.
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco told ABC News that she credited increased federal support targeting illegal guns as one driver of the decline. Local law enforcement agencies across the country also pointed to expanded officer patrols. The Brennan Center for Justice has noted, however, that crime trends are shaped by many overlapping forces — and that the precise mix is rarely easy to isolate.
A gap between data and perception
One of the most striking aspects of 2023 C.E.’s data is how little it matched public feeling. A Gallup poll found that more than 77% of Americans believed crime had increased compared to the previous year — even as the data pointed the other way.
That gap between perception and reality is not new. Research has long shown that media coverage of violent crime, especially high-profile incidents, can shape public fear in ways that outpace actual trends. The result is that real progress often goes unnoticed — and that’s worth naming clearly.
The disconnect also has policy consequences. When people believe crime is spiraling, pressure builds for responses that may not match the actual problem. Accurate data, reported honestly, is a form of public service.
The full picture
The 2023 C.E. decline was broad, but it was not universal. Washington, D.C. recorded a 36.18% rise in homicides as of late December, and Dallas saw an increase of 14.69% over the same period, per AH Analytics’ dashboard. These cities are reminders that national trends don’t erase local realities.
Mass shootings — a category tracked separately from overall homicide data — also continued to climb. The Gun Violence Archive recorded 2023 C.E. as the second-worst year for mass shootings on record. That caveat matters: a falling murder rate and a worsening mass-shooting problem can exist at the same time, and both deserve serious attention.
Still, the overall picture from 2023 C.E. is one of meaningful, measurable progress. After years of rising fear — some of it justified, some of it amplified — the data points toward a country where the worst of the pandemic-era violence surge has begun to ease. That’s a hard-won shift, and it deserves to be seen clearly.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Forbes
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