As spring approaches, some (but not all) big US cities continue positive homicide trends
Though we are still weeks away from the statrt of spring, enough time has passed in 2025 for me to think it worthwhile to check out the new year’s homicide data based on police reporting. Disappointingly, when discussing homicide data, I can no longer link to the AH Datalytics’ “YTD Murder Dashboard” as it has been taken down and now urges “users interested in understanding crime trends [to] visit the Real-Time Crime Index instead.” I love the RTCI, but it’s not quite as “real-time” as the Murder Dashboard had been. Still, the RTCI recently updated its murder data through the end of 2024, and now reports that 2024 brought more than a 16% decline in murders nationwide relative to 2023. That significant decline comes on the heels of 2023 bringing, according to this FBI accounting, more than an 11% decline in homicides. (Of course, there was a record spike in homicides in 2020, so these significant recent declines would appear to just roughly return the US to pre-pandemic homicide levels.)
I provide all background in part to highlight why I am uncertain about what to expect for homicide trends in 2025. After major recent declines, and with homicide rates approaching modern historic lows, I am inclined to predict that we will see a stabilization or even an uptick in homicides in 2025. But I had the same instinct heading into 2024 after both 2022 and 2023 showed significant homicide declines, and yet we seemed to have had still another major decline in 2024. Perhaps these politive trends can continue for yet another year.
So, to gather data, I searched for “real-time” police crime reports showing the latest “year to date” (YTD) 2025 homicide numbers/trends in some big cities. Because some big cities seem to provide only monthly data, through simple google searching I could only readily find/link police data from a subset of the 10 largest US cities. (Readers are encourged to provide data in the comments from cities/data I missed, and corrections are always welcome.) So, in oder of population size:
New York City police reporting YTD homicides down 22% so far in 2025
Los Angeles police reporting YTD homicides down 35% so far in 2025
Chicago police reporting YTD homicides up 8% so far in 2025
Philadelphia police reporting YTD homicides down 28% so far in 2025
Dallas police reporting YTD homicides down 57% so far in 2025
Jacksonville police reporting YTD homicides up 40% so far in 2025
Based on this very partial sample, I am hopeful that the positive downward homicide trends of recent years are continuing into 2025. But, critically, this amateur approach to data collection for the biggest US cities is itself incomplete, and it does not pick up cities which have often had the highest homicide rates (eg, Baltimore, Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis). And, of course, the first six or so weeks of homicide trends in 2025 may not prove to be at all representative of what could develop and change throughout the rest of 2025.
And yet, with all these important caveats, I find myself encouraged by what I found in these data. As I have noted in prior posts, it strikes me as notable that recent major declines in homicide have come at a time of relatively modest use of the death penalty and relatively lower rates of incarceration by modern US standards. (Though, as I have also stated before, I generally doubt that punishment trends siginficantly or directly account for homicide trends in any direction.) Especially with so much political strife and policy uncertainty as 2025 unfolds, it would be wonderful if everyone could come together to celebrate data suggesting we can have less crime and less punishment in the US.