U.S. murder rate approaches a record low

National U.S. murder rate approaches a record low June 30, 20265:00 AM ET Martin Kaste A police officer hangs yellow crime tape at Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Dec. 13, 2025, during the investigation of a shooting. Mark Stockwell/AP hide caption toggle caption Mark Stockwell/AP As the U.S. nears its 250th birthday, it's doing pretty well by at least one measure: the national murder rate. "The United States almost certainly had the lowest murder rate ever recorded in 2025, with the FBI having data back to 1960," says crime data analyst Jeff Asher. "And the available evidence suggests that we're going to go even lower this year." National The Justice Department is linking public safety money to immigration enforcement Asher published his prediction in late May, basing it in part on the early data he collects directly from about 600 police agencies for his site The Crime Index. That nationally representative sampling shows murders dropped 18.7% in the first four months of this year, compared to the same period last year. All violent crime dropped 6.4%. An important caveat is that this would be the lowest murder rate on record — meaning since the FBI started publishing national murder numbers in the 1950s. There are some older records of national rates of homicide (a larger category than criminal murder) kept by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sponsor Message "They [the CDC] have good homicide data back to 1930 or so, and there's a few years in the 1950s that were slightly lower than 2025," Asher says. "But if you put another big drop on top of that, then you're talking about this year potentially being the lowest homicide rate ever recorded, too." If there's another "big drop" in violence this summer, it will be especially striking in light of where things stood just a few years ago. The Crime Index shows the national murder rate spiking to 6.8 deaths per 100,000 in 2021— a 54% increase over the previous low of 4.4 deaths per 100,000 in 2014...