Nation's violent crime rate fell in 2024 to lowest in 20 years: FBI
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Police investigate a fatal shooting in Oakland, Calif., on August 27, 2024. Photo: Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times via Getty Images
The nation's violent and property crime rates dropped to a two-decade low in 2024, following the COVID-era surge in homicides, according to new FBI data released this week.
Why it matters: The numbers show crime was heading toward a 20-year record low in the last year of the Biden administration, despite President Trump's false campaign claims that President Biden was overseeing a nationwide crime spike.
The big picture: The new FBI numbers released Tuesday also come as preliminary data from the country's largest cities in 2025 so far suggest violent crime is falling even more and could be heading to modern record lows.
By the numbers: The U.S. had a violent crime rate of 359.1 per 100,000 residents last year, the FBI said.
- That surpassed the lowest violent crime rate the nation has had since 2014, when it was 372.4 per 100,000 residents, and many cities saw 30-year lows, an Axios analysis found.
- The rate was 370.4 in 2021, but that year the FBI collected data using two reporting systems, which makes the year not comparable.
- Meanwhile, the nation's property crime rate dropped to 1760.1 per 100,000 residents last year.
- That's also a 20-year low, according to an Axios analysis of FBI numbers.
Zoom in: Overall violent crime dropped by 4.5% and all property crime decreased 8.1% from 2024 to 2023, the FBI said.
- Murder and non-negligent manslaughter fell 14.9% during the same period.
- Automobile theft went down a staggering 18.6%, FBI data showed.
The intrigue: The FBI announcement made no mention of crime rates falling to 20-year lows — and didn't give out the crime rates per 100,000 residents as it does each year.
- The FBI also didn't say what was behind the drops.
Context: Violent crime ticked up early in Biden's term, but reports show it's dropped significantly since then as law enforcement agencies responded to the pandemic surge and adopted more detailed recordkeeping.
- Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump repeated false claims that immigration had sparked rising crime nationwide — a reason he gave for his mass deportation plan.
What they're saying: "As the pandemic receded, criminal justice experts fully expected crime to decline," Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice, told Axios.
- Rahman said the crime drops occurred, even while police staffing levels have declined in the past five years by around 5% nationwide.
- "What's driving these unprecedented gains in community safety is the government investment in community infrastructure from the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act and the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act."
Yes, but: The 2024 year-end data follows the Justice Department's April cancellation of $820 million in grants that had supported over 550 organizations focused on crime prevention research and services.
What we're watching: The Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) will continue to issue quarterly preliminary violent crime data from nearly 70 large cities.
- That will be an essential gauge of crime trends and will show if the loss of grants is hurting anti-crime efforts.
Go deeper: Early data shows major homicide drops in 2025 so far
