In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was 363.8 cases per 100,000 of the population. Even though the violent crime rate has been decreasing since 1990, the United States tops the ranking of countries with the most prisoners. In addition, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system in which law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit crime reports, data may not accurately reflect the total number of crimes committed in recent years. Reported violent crime rate in the United States The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation tracks the rate of reported violent crimes per 100,000 U.S. inhabitants. In the timeline above, rates are shown starting in 1990. The rate of reported violent crime has fallen since a high of 758.20 reported crimes in 1991 to a low of 363.6 reported violent crimes in 2014. In 2023, there were around 1.22 million violent crimes reported to the FBI in the United States. This number can be compared to the total number of property crimes, roughly 6.41 million that year. Of violent crimes in 2023, aggravated assaults were the most common offenses in the United States, while homicide offenses were the least common. Law enforcement officers and crime clearance Though the violent crime rate was down in 2013, the number of law enforcement officers also fell. Between 2005 and 2009, the number of law enforcement officers in the United States rose from around 673,100 to 708,800. However, since 2009, the number of officers fell to a low of 626,900 officers in 2013. The number of law enforcement officers has since grown, reaching 720,652 in 2023. In 2023, the crime clearance rate in the U.S. was highest for murder and non-negligent manslaughter charges, with around 57.8 percent of murders being solved by investigators and a suspect being charged with the crime. Additionally, roughly 46.1 percent of aggravated assaults were cleared in that year. A statistics report on violent crime in the U.S. can be found here.

In 2023, the District of Columbia had the highest reported violent crime rate in the United States, with 1,150.9 violent crimes per 100,000 of the population. Maine had the lowest reported violent crime rate, with 102.5 offenses per 100,000 of the population. Life in the District The District of Columbia has seen a fluctuating population over the past few decades. Its population decreased throughout the 1990s, when its crime rate was at its peak, but has been steadily recovering since then. While unemployment in the District has also been falling, it still has had a high poverty rate in recent years. The gentrification of certain areas within Washington, D.C. over the past few years has made the contrast between rich and poor even greater and is also pushing crime out into the Maryland and Virginia suburbs around the District. Law enforcement in the U.S. Crime in the U.S. is trending downwards compared to years past, despite Americans feeling that crime is a problem in their country. In addition, the number of full-time law enforcement officers in the U.S. has increased recently, who, in keeping with the lower rate of crime, have also made fewer arrests than in years past.

In 2024, about 64 percent of Americans felt there is more crime now in the United States than there was a year ago. A further 29 percent of survey respondents said that there was less crime in the U.S. in 2024 than there was the year previous.

The following datasets contain the crime rate for cities in the United States. The four datasets are separated based on population ranges.

FILE DESCRIPTION

File names: - 'crime_40 _60.csv': dataset for population ranging from 40,000 to 60,000. - 'crime_60 _100.csv': dataset for population ranging from 60,000 to 100,000. - 'crime_100 _250.csv': dataset for population ranging from 100,000 to 250,000. - 'crime_250 _plus.csv': dataset for population greater than 250,000.

COLUMN DESCRIPTION

For file: crime_40 _60.csv: - 'states': name of the state - 'cities': name of the city - 'population': population of the city - 'violent_crime': violent crime - 'murder': murder and nonnegligent manslaughter - 'rape': forcible rape - 'robbery': robbery - 'agrv_ The following datasets contain the crime rate for cities in the United States. The four datasets are separated based on population ranges.

FILE DESCRIPTION

File names: - 'crime_40 _60.csv': dataset for population ranging from 40,000 to 60,000. - 'crime_60 _100.csv': dataset for population ranging from 60,000 to 100,000. - 'crime_100 _250.csv': dataset for population ranging from 100,000 to 250,000. - 'crime_250 _plus.csv': dataset for population greater than 250,000.

COLUMN DESCRIPTION

For file: crime_40 _60.csv: - 'states': name of the state - 'cities': name of the city - 'population': population of the city - 'violent_crime': violent crime - 'murder': murder and nonnegligent manslaughter - 'rape': forcible rape - 'robbery': robbery - 'agrv_ assault': agrv_ assault - 'prop_crime': property crime - 'burglary': burglary - 'larceny': larceny theft - 'vehicle_theft': motor vehicle theft

crime_60 _100.csv: - 'states': name of the state - 'cities': name of the city - 'population': population of the city - 'violent_crime': violent crime - 'murder': murder and nonnegligent manslaughter - 'rape': forcible rape - 'robbery': robbery - 'agrv_ assault': agrv_ assault - 'prop_crime': property crime - 'burglary': burglary - 'larceny': larceny theft - 'vehicle_theft': motor vehicle theft

crime_100 _250.csv: - 'states': name of the state - 'cities': name of the city - 'population': population of the city - 'violent_crime': violent crime - 'murder': murder and nonnegligent manslaughter - 'rape': forcible rape - 'robbery': robbery - 'agrv_ assault': agrv_ assault - 'prop_crime': property crime - 'burglary': burglary - 'larceny': larceny theft - 'vehicle_theft': motor vehicle theft

crime_250 _plus.csv: - 'states': name of the state - 'cities': name of the city - 'population': population of the city - 'total_crime': total crime - 'murder': murder and nonnegligent manslaughter - 'rape': forcible rape - 'robbery': robbery - 'agrv_ assault': agrv_ assault - 'total_violent _crime': total violent crime - 'prop_crime': property crime - 'burglary': burglary - 'larceny': larceny theft - 'vehicle_theft': motor vehicle theft - 'tot_prop _crime': total property crime - 'arson': arson

Photo by David von Diemar on Unsplash

In 2023, an estimated 1,21,467 violent crimes occurred in the United States. This is a decrease from the year before, when 1,256,671 violent crimes were reported. Violent crime in the United States The Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that violent crime fell nationwide in the period from 1990 to 2023. Violent crime was at a height of 1.93 million crimes in 1992, but has since reached a low of 1.15 million violent crimes in 2014. When conducting crime reporting, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program considered murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault to be violent crimes, because they are offenses which involve force or threat of violence. In 2023, there were 19,252 reported murder and nonnegligent manslaughter cases in the United States. California ranked first on a list of U.S. states by number of murders, followed by Texas, and Florida.The greatest number of murders were committed by murderers of unknown relationship to their victim. “Girlfriend” was the fourth most common relationship of victim to offender in 2023, with a reported 568 partners murdering their girlfriends that year, while the sixth most common was “wife.” In addition, seven people were murdered by their employees and 12 people were murdered by their employers. The most used murder weapon in 2023 was the handgun, which was used in 7,1 murders that year. According to the FBI, firearms (of all types) were used in more than half of the nation’s murders. The total number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. annually has reached over 13 million units.

This comprehensive dataset provides a deep dive into crime statistics across the United States. It encompasses a wide range of crime types, spanning from violent offenses like homicide and assault to property crimes such as theft and burglary. The data is meticulously organized, offering insights into crime trends, geographical variations, and temporal patterns.

This dataset includes all valid felony, misdemeanor, and violation crimes reported to the New York City Police Department (NYPD) for all complete quarters so far this year (2017). For additional details, please see the attached data dictionary in the ‘About’ section.

This comprehensive dataset offers detailed crime data from 2020 to the present, encompassing a wide range of criminal offenses, arrest statistics, and law enforcement activities across the United States. The dataset captures the evolving landscape of crime during a pivotal period shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, social justice movements, and shifting socio-political dynamics.

Each record provides granular information on crime types, including violent crimes, property offenses, drug-related incidents, and more. The data includes key variables such as location details, timeframes, demographic information of offenders and victims, and arrest outcomes, enabling deep analysis of crime trends at national, state, and local levels.

This dataset is a valuable resource for criminal justice researchers, policy makers, law enforcement agencies, and data analysts, offering crucial insights for understanding patterns in public safety, shaping crime prevention strategies, and informing data-driven policy decisions. It supports comparative studies on crime fluctuations during and after significant societal events, helping stakeholders address pressing issues in public safety and community well-being.

This dataset contains different collected datasets with crime data of many large cities. Below are the descriptions for each seperate dataset. Note: Dataset properties and column may differ from each other since the information was collected by the local police in different styles and situations.

1. Los Angeles

The Los Angeles dataset has the collected data on different crimes that happened in Los Angeles from 2000 up until May 2024. The columns are as follows:

• DR_NO - Division of Records Number: Official file number made up of a 2 digit year, area ID, and 5 digits

• Date Rptd - The date when the police found out about the crime

• Date OCC - The actual date of the crime

• Time OCC - In military time

• Area - The LAPD has 21 Community Police Stations referred to as Geographic Areas within the department. These Geographic Areas are sequentially numbered from 1-21.

• Area Name - The 21 Geographic Areas or Patrol Divisions are also given a name designation that references a landmark or the surrounding community that it is responsible for. For example 77th Street Division is located at the intersection of South Broadway and 77th Street, serving neighborhoods in South Los Angeles.

• Rpt Dist No - A four-digit code that represents a sub-area within a Geographic Area. All crime records reference the "RD" that it occurred in for statistical comparisons. Find LAPD Reporting Districts on the LA City GeoHub at http://geohub.lacity.org/datasets/c4f83909b81d4786aa8ba8a74a4b4db1_4

• Crm Cd - Indicates the crime committed. (Same as Crime Code 1)

• Crm Cd Desc - Defines the Crime Code provided.

• Mocodes - Modus Operandi: Activities associated with the suspect in commission of the crime.

• Vict Age - The age of the victim

• Vict Sex - The gender of the victim. They are as follows:

  • M - Male
  • F - Female
  • X - Unknown

• Vict Descent - Descent Code:

  • A - Other Asian
  • B - Black
  • C - Chinese
  • D - Cambodian
  • F - Filipino
  • G - Guamanian
  • H - Hispanic/Latin/Mexican
  • I - American Indian/Alaskan Native
  • J - Japanese
  • K - Korean
  • L - Laotian
  • O - Other
  • P - Pacific Islander
  • S - Samoan
  • U - Hawaiian
  • V - Vietnamese
  • W - White
  • X - Unknown
  • Z - Asian Indian

• Premis Cd - The type of structure, vehicle, or location where the crime took place.

• Premis Desc - Defines the Premise Code provided.

• Weapon Used Cd - The type of weapon used in the crime.

• Status - Status of the case. (IC is the default)

• Status Desc - Defines the Status Code provided.

• Crm Cd 1 - Indicates the crime committed. Crime Code 1 is the primary and most serious one. Crime Code 2, 3, and 4 are respectively less serious offenses. Lower crime class numbers are more serious.

• Crm Cd 2 - May contain a code for an additional crime, less serious than Crime Code 1.

• Crm Cd 3 - May contain a code for an additional crime, less serious than Crime Code 1.

• Crm Cd 4 - May contain a code for an additional crime, less serious than Crime Code 1.

• Location - Street address of crime incident rounded to the nearest hundred block to maintain anonymity.

• Cross Street - Cross Street of rounded Address

• LAT - Latitude

• LON - Longitude

This dataset has 28 columns and 944K rows. I hope you will find it useful. God bless you

1. Chicago

This dataset contains crime data on Chicago, from 2001 to present. The columns are as follows:

• ID - Unique Identifier for the record

• Case Number - The Chicago Police Department RD Number (Records Division Number), which is unique to the incident.

• Date - Date when the incident occurred. this is sometimes a best estimate.

• Block - The partially redacted address where the incident occurred, placing it on the same block as the actual address.

• IUCR - The Illinois Unifrom Crime Reporting code. This is directly linked to the Primary Type and Description. See the list of IUCR codes at https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/c7ck-438e..

• Primary Type - The primary description of the IUCR code.

• Description - The secondary description of the IUCR code, a subcategory of the primary description.

• Location Description - Description of the location where the incident occurred.

• Arrest - Indicates whether an arrest was made.

• Domestic - Indicates whether the incident was domestic-related as defined by the Illinois Domestic Violence Act.

• Beat - Indicates the beat where the incident occurred. A beat is the smallest police geographic area – each beat has a dedicated police beat car. Three to five beats make up a police sector, and three sectors make up a police district. The Chicago Police Department has 22 police districts. See the beats at https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/aerh-rz74.

• Distric...

The graph shows the number of violent crime victims in the United States by gender from 2015 to 2025. The x-axis represents the years, while the y-axis indicates the number of male and female victims reported annually. Male victim counts range from a low of 181,851 in 2015 to a peak of 580,445 in 2023, while female victim counts range from 165,060 in 2015 to a high of 531,872 in 2023. Both genders show a consistent upward trend from 2015 to 2023, followed by a sharp drop in 2025. The data illustrates parallel trends for both male and female victims across the observed period.

This data set contains count data on domestic violence homicide and intimate partner homicide incidents from the 2015 the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR) and population from the SHR.

These data on 19th- and early 20th-century police department and arrest behavior were collected between 1975 and 1978 for a study of police and crime in the United States. Raw and aggregated time-series data are presented in Parts 1 and 3 on 23 American cities for most years during the period 1860-1920. The data were drawn from annual reports of police departments found in the Library of Congress or in newspapers and legislative reports located elsewhere. Variables in Part 1, for which the city is the unit of analysis, include arrests for drunkenness, conditional offenses and homicides, persons dismissed or held, police personnel, and population. Part 3 aggregates the data by year and reports some of these variables on a per capita basis, using a linear interpolation from the last decennial census to estimate population. Part 2 contains data for 267 United States cities for the period 1880-1890 and was generated from the 1880 federal census volume, REPORT ON THE DEFECTIVE, DEPENDENT, AND DELINQUENT CLASSES, published in 1888, and from the 1890 federal census volume, SOCIAL STATISTICS OF CITIES. Information includes police personnel and expenditures, arrests, persons held overnight, trains entering town, and population.

The graph illustrates the murder rate in the United States from 1985 to 2025. The x-axis represents the years, labeled with two-digit abbreviations from '85 to '25, while the y-axis shows the annual murder rate per 100,000 individuals. Throughout this 41-year period, the murder rate fluctuates between a high of 10.66 in 1991 and a low of 4.7 in 2014. Overall, the data reveals a significant downward trend in the murder rate from the mid-1980s, reaching its lowest point in the mid-2010s, followed by slight increases in the most recent years.

Historical dataset showing U.S. crime rate per 100K population by year from 1990 to 2021.

Number, percentage and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, by racialized identity group (total, by racialized identity group; racialized identity group; South Asian; Chinese; Black; Filipino; Arab; Latin American; Southeast Asian; West Asian; Korean; Japanese; other racialized identity group; multiple racialized identity; racialized identity, but racialized identity group is unknown; rest of the population; unknown racialized identity group), gender (all genders; male; female; gender unknown) and region (Canada; Atlantic region; Quebec; Ontario; Prairies region; British Columbia; territories), 2019 to 2024.

Historical dataset showing Central America crime rate per 100K population by year from N/A to N/A.

In 2022, there were slightly more female victims of violent crime than male victims in the United States, with about ********* male victims and ********* female victims. These figures are a significant increase from the previous year, when there were ********* male victims and ********* female victims. What counts as violent crime? Violent crime in the United States includes murder, rape, sexual assault, robbery, and assault. While violent crime across all areas has been steadily falling over the past few decades, the rate of aggravated assault is still relatively high, at ***** cases per 100,000 of the population. In 2021, there were more property crimes committed in the U.S. than there were violent crimes. Keep your enemies closer It is usually said that most victims know their attacker, and the data backs this up. In 2021, very few murders were committed by strangers. The same goes for rape and sexual assault victims; the majority were perpetrated by acquaintances, intimate partners, or relatives.

Historical dataset showing North America crime rate per 100K population by year from 2010 to 2021.

Context

This dataset looks at the number of movies produced in the United States of America that fall into the "crime" genre between 1985 and 2017 and compares it to violent crime rates of the same time. The time frame was chosen based off of accessible data (The Movies Dataset ends with 2017 and the FBI's CDE tool starts at 1985).

The data for the movies and genres was pulled from "The Movies Dataset" on Kaggle where columns were adjusted and the first two genres were kept. The data was then filtered to only include films released in the United States of America from 1985-2017. Violent crime data and population data in the USA was then joined.

Tableau Public Visualization

Content

movies-to-crime_data_by_population_1985-2017_2023-03-06.csv: This file contains the filtered and sorted data joining together the rest of the included data.

movies_data_cleaned_V2.csv: This includes a large movie dataset that was pulled from the aforementioned "The Movies Dataset" and adjusted for usability for this project, find original dataset here.

population_data_1985-2017.csv: This data was pulled from the World Bank, Population, Total for United States [POPTOTUSA647NWDB], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

violent_crime_rates_USA_1985-2017_2024-03-06.csv: This data was pulled from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Crime Data Explorer" tool. Data pulled includes all violent crime 1985-2017. More information concerning how violent crimes are categorized can be found on the Crime Data Explorer's website linked above.

Acknowledgements

All data was sourced via publicly available datasets and linked to above. Special thanks to Kaggle user Rounak Banik for their work creating "The Movies Dataset" which was incredibly helpful.

Inspiration

This project was a side project to gain further practice with tools such as SQL, R, Tableau and spreadsheets. It began with a focus on authors of crime novels vs amount of actual criminals. The project soon morphed into this after a struggle to find usable datasets.