FBI reports record decrease in violent crime in 2025

Justice DepartmentFBI reports record decrease in violent crime in 2025Both the violent crime and murder rates have decreased annually since spiking in 2022, the agency has found.Listen to this article with a free profile00:0000:00Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers respond following reports of gunfire near the White House on May 23.Aaron Schwartz / Bloomberg via Getty ImagesShareAdd to GoogleAug. 14, 2026, 4:31 PM EDTBy Dareh Gregorian and Michael KosnarStatistics released Friday by the FBI showed record decreases last year in both the national estimated violent crime rate and the estimated rate for murders and certain manslaughters.According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, the overall amount of violent crime declined by over 9% from 2024. The rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter — willful killings that were not pre-planned — fell by over 18%.Those are the largest year-to-year decreases in both categories since the FBI introduced the data-based estimations in 1936, the report said.President Donald Trump touted those statistics in remarks before law enforcement officers in Garden City, New York, saying the “numbers are the best numbers anybody’s ever seen on crime.” “We achieved the single largest reduction in violent crime in American history. It’s pretty amazing,” Trump said.FBI Director Kash Patel said in the introduction to the report that the 2025 murder rate of 4.1 per 100,000 inhabitants “is tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest rate since FBI estimations began.”There were an estimated 1,119,768 violent crimes in 2025 and 14,085 murders, the report said.Both the violent crime and murder rates have decreased annually since spiking in 2022. The violent crime rate fell by 4.5% in 2024, while murder and nonnegligent manslaughter decreased by 14.9%.“Preliminary trends for 2026 are showing additional decreases in crime,” Patel noted in the report.The analysis includes data from more than 17,000 law...