The United States appears headed toward its lowest homicide rate in more than a hundred years, according to a new report from the Council on Criminal Justice, which found an 18% drop in homicides across 30 American cities when comparing the first half of 2026 to the same period last year, amounting to roughly 215 fewer deaths.
Released Thursday, the report examined 13 different categories of crime and found declines in nine of them, including carjackings, home burglaries and aggravated assaults. A handful of categories moved in the other direction, with shoplifting, domestic violence, sexual assault and drug offenses all showing modest increases over the same stretch.
Researchers say the overall trend is outperforming expectations, pushing crime rates below where they stood even before the pandemic-era surge in violence that began in 2020.
With a competitive midterm election season underway, politicians from both parties have moved to take credit for the improving numbers. But the report’s findings cut across cities led by both Democratic and Republican officials, which the council’s president and CEO, Adam Gelb, said points to forces operating at a national scale rather than any single local policy driving the change.
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Gelb noted that homicide and broader crime rates are declining in cities with vastly different housing markets, economic conditions, policing strategies and levels of federal law enforcement involvement.
The data comes from police departments and other law enforcement agencies, with some crime categories drawing on information from as many as 36 cities and others relying on a smaller sample due to gaps in reporting or differing legal definitions.
One notable finding, according to Gelb, is that violent crime has also become less deadly overall, with a 23% drop in the share of serious violent incidents that resulted in death.
Property crime also mostly trended downward, with residential burglaries falling 13% year over year and now sitting roughly 50% below 2019 levels. Shoplifting was the exception among property crimes, rising 5%. Drug offenses ticked up slightly as well, though they remain below pre-pandemic levels.
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Not every city followed the national pattern. About a third of the cities in the sample saw homicides rise rather than fall between the first halves of 2025 and 2026, including Norfolk, Virginia, where homicides jumped 64%, and San Francisco, up 55%.
Far fewer cities, just Norfolk, Austin, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis, recorded more homicides in 2026 than they had in the same period back in 2019.
John Roman, who directs the Center on Public Safety and Justice at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, said a wide range of factors likely shape why crime rises in one place and falls in another.
He noted that conservative officials aligned with President Trump tend to credit stepped-up immigration enforcement and National Guard deployments in cities such as Los Angeles and Memphis, while Democratic officials often point to federal legislation under former President Biden that tightened background checks for gun purchases.
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Roman argued, though, that the most convincing explanations go beyond any single administration’s policies, pointing instead to declining drug use and the resulting drop in violence tied to illegal drug markets, along with a wave of post-pandemic federal funding that many localities funneled into social programs.
Much of that money, he said, went toward hiring teachers, social workers and others who work directly with young people considered at the highest risk of violence, both as perpetrators and victims.
Gelb and Roman agreed there’s no single explanation behind the trend, but Gelb said the shift deserves both close study and recognition, calling it one of the most significant public safety developments in decades, one that’s saving lives, sparing families trauma and helping communities regain a sense of stability.
