Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as a periodic nationwide assessment of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Each year, this information is reported in four types of files: (1) Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest, (2) Property Stolen and Recovered, (3) Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR), and (4) Police Employee (LEOKA) Data. The Supplementary Homicide Reports provide incident-based information on criminal homicides reported to the police. These homicides consist of murders, non-negligent manslaughter, and justifiable homicides. The data, provided monthly by UCR agencies, contain information describing the victim of the homicide, the offender, and the relationship between victim and offender.

In 2023, there were 14,327 murder offenders in the United States who were male, in comparison to 1,898 who were female. However, there were also 5,279 murder offenders where their gender was unknown. Homicides in the U.S. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter in the United States is defined as the willful killing of another human being. Justifiable homicides, or cases where a felon is killed by an officer in the line of duty or a felon is killed during a felony by a private citizen, are not included in murder counts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The total number of murders varies from state to state in the U.S., with more populous states having higher numbers of murders. Murder offenders and victims Most murder offenders in the United States are between the ages of 17 and 39, with the number of offenders declining steadily after age 40. Additionally, the highest rate of death by homicide was found among males between the ages of 15 and 24. The highest rate of death by homicide for females was for girls under the age of one.

For a comprehensive guide to this data and other UCR data, please see my book at ucrbook.comVersion 11 release notes:Adds 2020 data. Please note that the FBI has retired UCR data ending in 2020 data so this will be the last SHR data they release. Changes .rda file to .rds.Version 10 release notes:Changes release notes description, does not change data.Version 9 release notes:Adds 2019 data.Version 8 release notes:Adds 2018 data.Changes source of data for years 1985-2018 to be directly from the FBI. 2018 data was received via email from the FBI, 2016-2017 is from the FBI who mailed me a DVD, and 1985-2015 data is from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer site (https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/downloads-and-docs).Adds .csv version of the data.Makes minor changes to value labels for consistency and to fix grammar. Version 7 release notes:Changes project name to avoid confusing this data for the ones done by NACJD.Version 6 release notes:Adds 2017 data.Version 5 release notes:Adds 2016 data.Standardizes the "group" column which categorizes cities and counties by population.Arrange rows in descending order by year and ascending order by ORI. Version 4 release notes: Fix bug where Philadelphia Police Department had incorrect FIPS county code. Version 3 Release Notes:Merges data with LEAIC data to add FIPS codes, census codes, agency type variables, and ORI9 variable.Change column names for relationship variables from offender_n_relation_to_victim_1 to victim_1_relation_to_offender_n to better indicate that all relationship are victim 1's relationship to each offender. Reorder columns.This is a single file containing all data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports from 1976 to 2018. The Supplementary Homicide Report provides detailed information about the victim, offender, and circumstances of the murder. Details include victim and offender age, sex, race, ethnicity (Hispanic/not Hispanic), the weapon used, circumstances of the incident, and the number of both offenders and victims. Years 1976-1984 were downloaded from NACJD, while more recent years are from the FBI. All files came as ASCII+SPSS Setup files and were cleaned using R. The "cleaning" just means that column names were standardized (different years have slightly different spellings for many columns). Standardization of column names is necessary to stack multiple years together. Categorical variables (e.g. state) were also standardized (i.e. fix spelling errors, have terminology be the same across years). The following is the summary of the Supplementary Homicide Report copied from ICPSR's 2015 page for the data.The Uniform Crime Reporting Program Data: Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) provide detailed information on criminal homicides reported to the police. These homicides consist of murders; non-negligent killings also called non-negligent manslaughter; and justifiable homicides. UCR Program contributors compile and submit their crime data by one of two means: either directly to the FBI or through their State UCR Programs. State UCR Programs frequently impose mandatory reporting requirements which have been effective in increasing both the number of reporting agencies as well as the number and accuracy of each participating agency's reports. Each agency may be identified by its numeric state code, alpha-numeric agency ("ORI") code, jurisdiction population, and population group. In addition, each homicide incident is identified by month of occurrence and situation type, allowing flexibility in creating aggregations and subsets.

The killing of Tyre Nichols in January 2023 by Memphis Police Officers has reignited debates about police brutality in the United States. Between 2013 and 2024, over 1,000 people have been killed by police every year. Some of the most infamous examples include the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and the shooting of Breonna Taylor earlier that year. Within the provided time period, the most people killed by police in the United States was in 2024, at 1,375 people. Police Violence in the U.S. Police violence is defined as any instance where a police officer’s use of force results in a civilian’s death, regardless of whether it is considered justified by the law. While many people killed by police in the U.S. were shot, other causes of death have included tasers, vehicles, and physical restraints or beatings. In the United States, the rate of police shootings is much higher for Black Americans than it is for any other ethnicity, and recent incidents of police killing unarmed Black men and women in the United States have led to widespread protests against police brutality, particularly towards communities of color. America’s Persistent Police Problem Despite increasing visibility surrounding police violence in recent years, police killings have continued to occur in the United States at a consistently high rate. In comparison to other countries, police in the U.S. have killed people at a rate three times higher than police in Canada and 60 times the rate of police in England. While U.S. police have killed people in almost all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, New Mexico was reported to have the highest rate of people killed by the police in the United States, with 8.03 people per million inhabitants killed by police.