America’s Second ‘Great Crime Decline’ Could Already Be Here

This story was originally published by Reasons to be Cheerful

14 min read

This story was originally published by The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here.

Since most homicides in the U.S. are committed with guns, gun violence and the nation’s homicide rate are closely related. That means the country’s historic drop in homicides is a good indicator of dropping gun deaths. At The Trace, we’ve been covering the decline in violence since at least 2023, so some of this may not exactly be new to you. But here’s a bit of good news that you may not know: We’re probably living through a second “Great Crime Decline,” and this one seems persistent.

The first “Great Crime Decline” was in the 1990s. The nation’s murder rate declined from a high of 9.8 per 100,000 people in 1991, according to FBI data, to just 5.5 in 2000 — a 44 percent decrease. As crime data analyst Jeff Asher notes, other than the 1990s, a decline in murders like the one we’re living through right now has “never been this large for this long.” The country has now seen three — going on four — years of historically large decreases, bringing us to rates lower than before COVID.

Look at just this year so far: In New York City, homicides through April were at their lowest point in monthly data going back to 1960. Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Chicago, and other cities have also seen historically low numbers in 2026. Nationally, the data suggests the U.S. may be at or near the lowest homicide rate ever recorded by the FBI.

And yet, the reasons for the reversal are murky. As Asher points out, the drop has happened across many kinds of cities, during a period of reduced police staffing, elevated gun availability, and persistent poverty and inequality. That makes easy explanations — whether partisan or ideological — difficult to square with the evidence.

At the same time, the government is pulling back some of the very investments that could help explain what worked. Federal funding for research has also been threatened or reduced.

In the Q&A below, Asher — who writes a newsletter of his own — and I discuss what the 2026 data shows so far, how today’s violence levels compare with the COVID-era peak and pre-pandemic lows, why the decline remains so hard to explain, and what may be lost if policymakers retreat from funding the programs and research needed to understand and prolong it. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

One quick note before you jump in

Asher and I talk about a few different data sources:

• The FBI collects crime data from law enforcement agencies across the country. That includes criminal homicide (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter) regardless of the means.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also tracks homicide, but as a cause of death rather than strictly the criminal offense. The CDC also tracks legally justifiable homicides, which may not be considered murder. The CDC also reports homicides by mechanism, like homicide by firearm.
• The Gun Violence Archive, which is a nonprofit, tracks shootings in near-real time using media and police reports. While it’s not as comprehensive as the CDC, it’s more timely. The Gun Violence Archive only tracks shootings, though, not homicides by other means.
• Asher’s Real-Time Crime Index aggregates crime data, most notably murder data, from more than 400 law enforcement agencies, resulting in data similar to the FBI’s. The sample provides a reliable estimate of national crime trends as they happen, without having to wait for the FBI to release its quarterly and annual data.

And a quick plug: If you like data, The Trace also has some. Head to the Gun Violence Data Hub to explore.

Chip Brownlee: What are you seeing in the data for 2026?

Jeff Asher: So far, we’re seeing pretty sizable declines. Maybe not as sizable as before, but we are seeing large drops in murder. The Gun Violence Archive data points to the same thing. We don’t have CDC data yet, but we do have aggregated murder data from a couple dozen cities. We’ve got Real-Time Crime Index data, so we have lots of data all pointing in the same direction, which is that the drops are continuing.

I think it’s too early to say how large the decline will be, so I wouldn’t put a guesstimate on that. I do think there’s evidence that the murder and gun violence drop is lessening a little bit from that really steep decline we saw in 2024 and 2025. But I don’t know if that’s going to continue throughout the year or if it’s just a couple of months that look that way. It is still a large drop. Just because it’s not 18 to 20 percent doesn’t mean it’s not a successful decline in gun violence.

For people who may not be as dialed in on where we are today compared to where we were two or three years ago: How do things look now compared to the height of COVID?

You don’t even have to compare it to the height of COVID. You can compare it to the years when we saw historic lows, and we’re below that in pretty much everything.

The dramatic decline in murder and gun violence probably means we had 6,000 to 8,000 fewer murder victims last year than we had each year in 2020, 2021 and 2022. It’s a remarkable decline. I think you probably hear people saying, “Of course it returned to normal,” but I don’t think anybody predicted that this would happen.

And before COVID, the 2010s was one of the safest periods in history, right?

Yes. If you look at murder, it rose in the 1970s and was really high in the 1980s and the early part of the 1990s. Then there was the “Great Crime Decline” of the 1990s. In the 2000s, murder more or less stayed stable as violent crime and property crime kept falling. Murder didn’t fall quite as much.

It hit a historic low in 2014, which was the lowest murder rate ever recorded, and then it bumped up between 2015 and 2019. But it was still at a low level before 2020, and then it exploded in 2020.

But it seems like today it is lower than that 2014 or 2015 period?

Yes, it’s significantly lower. Right now, it looks like last year was likely lower than 2014, and this year it is even lower.

That said, there’s obviously uncertainty in how the FBI measures things. The CDC data is not showing a historic low; it’s showing slightly above 2014 levels. So there’s some uncertainty in the measurements.

We can say the FBI is probably going to report a historic low, but you should take that with an appropriate grain of salt. We don’t know the exact number of people who were murdered last year, and we don’t know the national murder rate. But we think it’s probably the lowest that’s ever been reported by the FBI.

Drilling down, what do things look like in some of the particular cities you track? In New York, for example, I’ve seen you mention that the city has had the fewest murders ever reported so far this year.

Through April, New York had the fewest murders ever reported for that period, which is astounding. We have monthly data in New York going back to 1960. Philly had its fewest murders since the early 1960s. A whole bunch of other places are seeing their fewest murders since the 1960s. Baltimore had four murders in April, which is the fewest in a month since the very early 1960s.

So you’re seeing historic drops in a lot of places, but New York is astounding. I looked at that chart and was amazed. There were roughly 700 murders in the first four months of the early 1990s — in 1990 and 1991.

I’m reminded of a newsletter I did on “Saturday Night Live.” I decided to watch all of the episodes and thought, “Well, I write about data, so let me do data on SNL.” My favorite joke was Norm Macdonald on “Weekend Update” in the mid- or late 1990s. He had a joke where he said the NYPD reported a 20 percent drop in murder, as there had only been 384 murders so far that year. Then he said, “Only 384? If you ask me, that’s 307 too many.” And it’s like, “Norm Macdonald, no, it’s 384 too many.”

But he was talking about a show in May [of that year], and you’re like, wait, that’s more murders than New York reported all of last year. It’s astounding. There were about 90 percent fewer murders in the first four months of 2026 in New York than in the first four months of 1990. It’s incredible.

Nationally, 2026 would be the fourth straight year of declining murders, correct?

Yes, and three straight of those — 2023, 2024 and 2025 — were the largest ever recorded.

These are pretty significant decreases, consistently over time. Is it unusual how consistent the decline has been?

You saw it in the 1990s as crime came down, but other than that “Great Crime Decline,” it’s never been this large for this long.

Usually murder goes up a couple of percentage points. Before 2020, the largest one-year increase was around 15 percent, and 2020 had double that increase. The largest one-year decrease was about nine percent in 1996. Then 2023 beat that, 2024 was significantly larger and 2025 was even larger.

I think I know what your answer will be, but I’ll ask anyway. Why did this happen, and why is it still happening?

I don’t know, and stop asking me. It’s such a difficult question. It’s the question of our time. One of the frustrating things about following the “what” so closely is that there isn’t more attention being paid to the “why.”

The only explanations that are ever offered feel like they’re for political purposes, rather than treating this as a national, research-based emergency to figure out exactly why this is happening so that we can continue it. Instead, from a leadership perspective, I think political leaders on both sides of the aisle tend to say it’s because of X, rather than saying, “We don’t really know, and it behooves us to understand it better.”

It’s not easily explained, and people tend not to do well with explanations that are not easy. It took forever just to get people to admit that the decline — which is so obvious and so clear in the data — was actually a real thing. Now getting them to accept that we don’t know why, and to figure out what those answers could be, is a real challenge.

And this is also coming at the same time that funding for research is being cut.

Yes, that’s never helpful. And funding is being cut for a lot of the things that I think make sense as possible answers, even though we don’t necessarily know the degree to which they’re involved.

Could you expand on that? What are some of the things that might be worth looking into?

Certainly the impact of federal spending. Also the expansion of programs and interventions, including things like Ceasefire and violence interrupters. There are five main points that you have to account for.

One, it’s happening everywhere, so it’s probably not local factors.

Two, it happened at a time of decreased police presence. We have fewer officers everywhere.

Three, it happened at a time when we haven’t solved the root causes of crime. It’s not like we fixed poverty and education. Those are still obviously major issues.

Four, the country is still awash in guns. Gun sales are still at elevated levels, even though they’ve come down a little bit.

Five, there hasn’t been some major breakthrough in policing efficiency. Clearance rates plunged in 2020. Now they’re rising again, but that probably has more to do with the fact that murder is falling than anything else.

You really have to account for all of those factors, and there’s not a lot that answers that. So I think the idea that John Roman has talked about a lot makes sense: We threw a lot of money at a lot of things, and some of it undoubtedly worked. We don’t necessarily know which things worked, but every city tried different things, and every city generally had success because they were able to try things.

But we don’t know which of those things were the most important and impactful, or what we should do the next time.

You talked earlier about early indications that the decline might be slowing. Are there any signs that the decline is going to reverse?

I don’t think there’s evidence that we’re going to see an increase, or that we’re suddenly going to be dealing with more and more gun violence relative to what we’ve been seeing previously.

The issue remains critical and important, and it isn’t solved. But I think the evidence points to what was maybe a 15 percent drop, then a 12 percent drop, and now maybe an eight percent drop. So you’re not necessarily seeing an increase. There’s still evidence that things are getting better, but maybe they’re not getting better as fast as possible.

Regardless of whether they’re getting better faster, we should always be trying to improve this issue. Until there are zero murders or zero shootings, we shouldn’t consider the issue solved. It should be an issue we’re trying to fix.

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You’ve been working with crime data like this for years. Taking a step back, has the availability of data gotten better over time? Has doing this work gotten easier?

Yes, we’re in a golden age of crime data. There are so many sources and so much data available from places that didn’t used to have it.

You start with the NIBRS [National Incident-Based Reporting System] transition. There are states that make all of their data available. Individual agencies have also gotten a lot better at publishing their data. Now the FBI is publishing monthly preliminary data, and you can put it all together. That’s what we do in the Real-Time Crime Index. We’re able to evaluate trends as they occur because we can now get data from 500 to 600 agencies, and that tells us the national trend with very little wiggle room.

We’re able to see trends as they develop, and that’s novel. It means the question is not “what” anymore in the way that it was even three or four years ago. It’s “what’s next?” and “what’s causing it?” Those are a lot harder to answer. We’ve sort of answered the “what” question, and I think people take it for granted. There’s no other area I’m aware of where we sort of ignore the “what,” but in crime data there are now a lot of opportunities to know what’s happening.

The post America’s Second ‘Great Crime Decline’ Could Already Be Here appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

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