California reported the largest number of homicides to the FBI in 2023, at 1,929 for the year. Texas recorded the second-highest number of murders, with 1,845 for the year. Homicide victim demographics There were a total of 19,252 reported homicide cases in the U.S. in 2023. When looking at murder victims by gender and ethnicity, the vast majority were male, while just over half of the victims were Black or African American. In addition, homicide victims in the United States were found most likely to be between the ages of 20 and 34 years old, with the majority of victims aged between 17 to 54 years old. Are murders up? In short, no – since the 1990s the number of murders in the U.S. has decreased significantly. In 1990, the murder rate per 100,000 people stood at 9.4, and stood at 5.7 in 2023. It should be noted though that the number of homicides increased slightly from 2014 to 2017, although figures declined again in 2018 and 2019, before ticking up once more in 2020 and 2021. Despite this decline, when viewed in international comparison, the U.S. murder rate is still notably high. For example, the Canadian homicide rate stood at 1.94 in 2023, while the homicide rate in England and Wales was even lower.

Intentional homicides (per 100,000 people) in United States was reported at 6.8075 in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Intentional homicides (per 100;000 people) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on September of 2025.

In 2023, around 2,444 homicide victims in the United States were aged between 20 and 24 years old. A further 2,362 murder victims were between the ages of 30 and 34 years old. Most murder victims in the United States in 2023 were between the ages of 17 and 54 years old.

In 2023, 13,529 recorded murders in the United States were committed by firearm. This is a decrease from the previous year, when 12,244 homicides were committed with a firearm in the country. However, figures may not accurately reflect the total number of homicides, as not all law enforcement agencies in the U.S. submitted homicide data.

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.

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.

In 2023, the FBI reported that there were 13,789 victims of murder who identified as male, compared to 3,849 victims of murder who identified as female in the United States. A further 75 murder victims were of an unknown gender in that year.

In 2023, the rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the United States was at 5.7 cases per 100,000 of the population. This is a decrease from the previous year, when the murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate stood at 6.5 per 100,000 of the population. However, due to the FBI's transition to a new crime reporting system, only not all law enforcement agencies submitted crime data to the FBI for 2023. As a result, figures may not accurately reflect the rate of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter in the U.S. in this year.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) Series, previously called the National Crime Surveys (NCS), has been collecting data on personal and household victimization through an ongoing survey of a nationally-representative sample of residential addresses since 1973. The NCVS was designed with four primary objectives: (1) to develop detailed information about the victims and consequences of crime, (2) to estimate the number and types of crimes not reported to the police, (3) to provide uniform measures of selected types of crimes, and (4) to permit comparisons over time and types of areas. The survey categorizes crimes as "personal" or "property." Personal crimes include rape and sexual attack, robbery, aggravated and simple assault, and purse-snatching/pocket-picking, while property crimes include burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism. Each respondent is asked a series of screen questions designed to determine whether she or he was victimized during the six-month period preceding the first day of the month of the interview. A "household respondent" is also asked to report on crimes against the household as a whole (e.g., burglary, motor vehicle theft). The data include type of crime, month, time, and location of the crime, relationship between victim and offender, characteristics of the offender, self-protective actions taken by the victim during the incident and results of those actions, consequences of the victimization, type of property lost, whether the crime was reported to police and reasons for reporting or not reporting, and offender use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol. Basic demographic information such as age, race, gender, and income is also collected, to enable analysis of crime by various subpopulations. This version of the NCVS, referred to as the collection year, contains records from interviews conducted in the 12 months of the given year.

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.

Number and rate (per 100,000 population) of homicide victims, Canada and Census Metropolitan Areas, 1981 to 2024.

Number of homicide victims, by method used to commit the homicide (total methods used; shooting; stabbing; beating; strangulation; fire (burns or suffocation); other methods used; methods used unknown), Canada, 1974 to 2024.

How many criminal homicides were there in the U.S.? In 2023, there were 19,252 reported cases of murder or non-negligent manslaughter in the United States, a decrease from 21,781 cases reported in the previous year. This figure has also decreased in comparison to 1991, when there were 24,700 reported murder and non-negligent manslaughter cases. Murder vs. Manslaughter While it is can be easy to confuse the two terms, murder and nonnegligent manslaughter are two different crimes. While there is some variation from state to state, murder is usually seen as having some planning or forethought involved in the crime, while manslaughter is considered to be a “crime of passion,” with the absence of forethought. Courts tend to differentiate between the states of mind of the accused when bringing manslaughter or murder charges against them. The victims In the United States, there were far more male murder victims than female murder victims, and Black victims made up a large proportion of the total number of victims. Additionally, many murders in the U.S. are perpetrated by either an acquaintance of the victim or a stranger.

Victims of gang-related homicides (total number of homicide victims; number of homicide victims - unknown gang-relation; number of homicide victims - known gang relation; number of gang-related homicide victims; percentage of gang-related homicide victims; rate (per 100,000 population) of gang-related homicide victims), Canada and regions, 1999 to 2024.

Investigator(s): Federal Bureau of Investigation Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as periodic nationwide assessments of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. With the 1977 data, the title was expanded to Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data. Each year, participating law enforcement agencies contribute reports to the FBI either directly or through their state reporting programs. ICPSR archives the UCR data as five separate components: (1) summary data, (2) county-level data, (3) incident-level data (National Incident-Based Reporting System [NIBRS]), (4) hate crime data, and (5) various, mostly nonrecurring, data collections. Summary data are reported in four types of files: (a) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (b) Property Stolen and Recovered, (c) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (d) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data (Law Enforcement Officers Killed or Assaulted). The county-level data provide counts of arrests and offenses aggregated to the county level. County populations are also reported. In the late 1970s, new ways to look at crime were studied. The UCR program was subsequently expanded to capture incident-level data with the implementation of the National Incident-Based Reporting System. The NIBRS data focus on various aspects of a crime incident. The gathering of hate crime data by the UCR program was begun in 1990. Hate crimes are defined as crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. In September 1994, disabilities, both physical and mental, were added to the list. The fifth component of ICPSR's UCR holdings is comprised of various collections, many of which are nonrecurring and prepared by individual researchers. These collections go beyond the scope of the standard UCR collections provided by the FBI, either by including data for a range of years or by focusing on other aspects of analysis. NACJD has produced resource guides on UCR and on NIBRS data.

Handguns are by far the most common murder weapon used in the United States, accounting for 7,159 homicides in 2023. This is followed by firearms of an unstated type, with 5,295 cases in that year. Why do murders happen in the U.S.? While most of the time the circumstances of murders in the U.S. remain unknown, homicides due to narcotics come in as the second most common circumstance – making them more common than, for example, gang killings. Despite these gruesome facts, the violent crime rate has fallen significantly since 1990, and the United States is much safer than it was in the 1980s and 1990s. Knife crime vs disease: Leading causes of death The death rate in the U.S. had hovered around the same level since 1990 until there was a large increase due to the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. Heart disease, cancer, and accidents were the three leading causes of death in the country in 2022. The rate of death from heart disease is significantly higher than the homicide rate in the United States, at 167.2 deaths per 100,000 population compared to a 5.7 homicides per 100,000. Given just 1,562 murders were caused by knife crime, it is fair to say that heart disease is a far bigger killer in the U.S.

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 dataset shows the year-over-year crime reduction in New Orleans by category, based on the 2024 NOPD Year-End Report.

The graph shows the number of gun deaths per year in the United States from 1999 to 2023. The x-axis represents the years, while the y-axis displays the annual count of gun-related fatalities. The data ranges from a low of 28,663 gun deaths in 2000 to a high of 48,830 in 2021. From 1999 to 2014, the numbers remained relatively stable with slight fluctuations. However, gun deaths began increasing significantly after 2015, peaking in 2021 before a slight decline in 2022 and 2023. The graph highlights long-term trends in gun-related fatalities, emphasizing a notable rise in recent years.

In 2023, the FBI reported that there were 9,284 Black murder victims in the United States and 7,289 white murder victims. In comparison, there were 554 murder victims of unknown race and 586 victims of another race. Victims of inequality? In recent years, the role of racial inequality in violent crimes such as robberies, assaults, and homicides has gained public attention. In particular, the issue of police brutality has led to increasing attention following the murder of George Floyd, an African American who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. Studies show that the rate of fatal police shootings for Black Americans was more than double the rate reported of other races. Crime reporting National crime data in the United States is based off the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s new crime reporting system, which requires law enforcement agencies to self-report their data in detail. Due to the recent implementation of this system, less crime data has been reported, with some states such as Delaware and Pennsylvania declining to report any data to the FBI at all in the last few years, suggesting that the Bureau's data may not fully reflect accurate information on crime in the United States.