New FBI data shows murder and other violent crime rates have fallen in the last year

According to newly released statistics from the FBI, crime rates have fallen across the United States over the past year, particularly violent crimes.

The results, based on reported data from 2023, showed that murder and manslaughter fell 11.6% year-on-year, the largest decline in two decades. It's also nearly double the 2021-2022 decline of 6.1%.

The number of rapes has also fallen significantly, by an estimated 9.4 percent. The number of serious assaults fell by 2.8 percent last year. The number of robberies also fell by 0.3 percent nationwide, according to the FBI.

Overall, violent crime in the country decreased by 3% from 2022 to 2023, and the property crime rate fell by 2.4%, the annual report shows.

A 7.6% drop in burglaries and a 4.4% drop in theft rates contributed to the drop in property crime. However, there was also a 12.6% increase in auto thefts, the highest rate since 2007. Last year's report recorded the largest year-over-year increase in this category.

More than 16,000 law enforcement agencies covering 94.3 percent of the U.S. population – including departments in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles – submitted data for the report.

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This comes as the US presidential election is just weeks away, with candidates from both major parties making crime policy a central theme of their campaigns.

On the one hand, Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris is citing her previous role as Attorney General as proof that she has fought against crime and criminals, comparing Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to just another criminal she will bring to justice.

Although she has not spoken extensively about her criminal justice policies, during her time as a senator she co-authored the Justice in Policing Act, a proposal to reform policing in America following the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. She also supported the decriminalization of marijuana.

As vice president, Harris led the newly created Office of Gun Violence Prevention, where she called on all states to implement red flag laws and announced new federal regulations for stricter background checks for gun owners.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump claims that crime rates have “increased dramatically” under President Biden and Vice President Harris, and he accused the FBI of “fake testimony” in cases where its data showed the opposite.

He recently cited a separate federal government report showing that the number of crime victims has increased slightly under the Biden administration. That report, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the Justice Department, found that the number of victims increased by less than 1% in 2023 and the rate was about the same as during Trump's time in office in 2019. It also backs up the claim that overall crime has been declining since the 1990s.

Despite these numbers, Trump insists that crime is at an all-time high and that he is the only candidate who can change that. The former president has called for more aggressive policing, less government control of the police and greater militarization of the police. He also wants to expand the death penalty and has promised to release all those accused of the January 6 attack on his first day in office.

He has also targeted Harris, accusing her of being soft on crime and claiming she wants to defund the police.

Trump has not made an official statement on the FBI report, but during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Monday night, the former president spoke about how ABC News' David Muir, in his presentation at the Trump-Harris debate, had refuted his claim that crime rates were rising.

Trump told those present: “Anyone who thinks crime is going down has a serious brain problem. And then the next day it was announced that Trump was right and crime was up 45%.” It is unclear where this statistic comes from.

In her statement, Harris again referenced her previous roles as a prosecutor, citing the rise in violent crime rates before she and the president took office in 2020 as evidence that the work they did “immediately” then led to today's decline in rates and that the “great progress” will not stop.

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“Americans are safer today than when we began our administration,” her statement said. “Our progress continues this year, building on the significant declines in previous years of our administration… I am committed to continuing our work to support local law enforcement, invest in proven crime prevention and community violence prevention, and combat gun violence with common sense gun safety laws.”

President Biden also cited the efforts he and Harris made in 2020 as a reason for the decline, particularly the American Rescue Plan's investments in public safety and executive actions on gun laws.

“None of this happened by accident,” the president said before listing his administration's accomplishments. “We are not stopping now. The only way to continue this progress is to invest in what works. That's why I will continue to push Congress to fund 100,000 additional police officers and a strong ATF, invest in community violence reduction programs, and enact common sense gun safety reforms, including a ban on assault weapons.”

In an interview with Scripps News, Stefanie Feldman – the director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, created by President Biden and overseen by Harris – acknowledged the argument that the drop in crime since the pandemic peak may be due in part to a return to normalcy. But she said that return was encouraged by government efforts that in turn contributed to the policies that helped reduce violent crime, such as ensuring law enforcement agencies were not defunded during the pandemic.

“When you combine that progress with the work President Biden has done with Vice President Harris to stop the flow of guns into our communities, you get big numbers like the numbers the FBI is releasing today,” Feldman said.

Feldman also addressed claims that the FBI report, because it relies on reported data, does not paint a complete picture of the country's crime rate. She said that while the FBI report does To provide a nationwide overview of the country's crime rate, the government agrees that officials “need to look under every stone to find out what additional measures we can take.”

“President Biden and Vice President Harris will be the first to say we have so much more to do,” Feldman told Scripps News. “The FBI's data shows that the comprehensive strategy of funding police and funding our communities is working, and that's why this administration must be able to continue its work over the next four months.”

Later this week, President Biden and Harris are expected to announce further gun and crime reforms, Feldman said.