U.S. homicide rate trending under century low, report says

The Council on Criminal Justice on Thursday reported that the homicide rate for the first half of 2026 was down roughly 18% from the same period last year. Meanwhile, 2025’s homicide rate appeared to be the lowest the United States had seen since 1900. CCJ expected the FBI to release data later this year that would confirm whether 2025’s murder rate was, indeed, one of the lowest in more than a century. Either way, 2026’s homicide rate appeared to trend lower than last year’s, according to the Washington-based nonpartisan think tank.

Did homicide alone decline in frequency, or did other crimes decline as well? Nine out of 13 types of crime tracked by CCJ occurred less frequently during the first half of 2026 than they did during the first half of 2025. While sexual assaults, nonviolent drug offenses, and domestic violence offenses were still less frequent than they had been in years past, they appeared to have occurred more in the first half of 2026 than they had in the first half of 2025.

Did researchers provide any explanation for why homicide—and crime rates generally—were declining? There wasn’t a single clear explanation for the decline in homicide rates, CCJ explained. Rather, a range of possible influences could be pushing down the statistics of murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Murder and crime rates declined all across a sample size of 36 American cities, all of which had different political parties in power and different law enforcement and justice system practices, CCJ said.

Dig deeper: Read my report in Compassion about what experts had to say about the Trump administration’s claims that it had reduced crime rates with its U.S. National Guard deployments.

Also, read Emma Freire’s report—to which I also contributed a few notes—about the debate over the deployments and a breakdown of the cities most affected.