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, 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.

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.

The purpose of this project was to estimate long-term trends in violent victimization by gender and various socio-demographic factors. These factors included race and ethnicity, age, type of place (urban, suburban, rural), socio-economic status, marital status (for adults), and family status (for juveniles). The principal investigators also further disaggregated these violent victimization trends by victim-offender relationship to reveal trends in violence committed by strangers, intimate partners, and known/non-intimate offenders. The researchers produced these various trends in violent victimization by pooling and appropriately weighting the National Crime Survey and its successor, the National Crime Victimization Survey for the period 1973 to 2005, resulting in 33 years of data. In total, a series of 135 trends in violent victimization were developed.

1) Data Introduction • The Gun Violence Dataset in US is a tabularized data set for gun violence analysis that includes the date, location, victim and suspect information, and geographic coordinates of major 2024 shootings across the U.S.

2) Data Utilization (1) Gun Violence Dataset in US has characteristics that: • Each row contains key information about the shooting, including incident-specific ID, date of occurrence, state and city/county, number of deaths and injuries, suspects (death, injury, arrest), latitude, and longitude. • Data is designed to analyze the distribution of gun incidents and the extent of damage by month and region, and spatial analysis through geographic coordinates is also possible. (2) Gun Violence Dataset in US can be used to: • Analysis of shooting trends by region: Use data by location, magnitude of damage, and time to visualize and analyze the regional and temporal distribution and risk areas of gun violence. • Establishing public safety policies and prevention strategies: Based on victim and suspect information and incident characteristics, it can be used to establish effective gun control, prevention policies, resource allocation strategies, and more.

In response to a growing concern about hate crimes, the United States Congress enacted the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. The Act requires the attorney general to establish guidelines and collect, as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, data "about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation, arson, and destruction, damage or vandalism of property." Hate crime data collection was required by the Act to begin in calendar year 1990 and to continue for four successive years. In September 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act to add disabilities, both physical and mental, as factors that could be considered a basis for hate crimes. Although the Act originally mandated data collection for five years, the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996 amended the collection duration "for each calendar year," making hate crime statistics a permanent addition to the UCR program. As with the other UCR data, law enforcement agencies contribute reports either directly or through their state reporting programs. Information contained in the data includes number of victims and offenders involved in each hate crime incident, type of victims, bias motivation, offense type, and location type.

This study provides an evidence-based understanding on etiological issues related to school shootings and rampage shootings. It created a national, open-source database that includes all publicly known shootings that resulted in at least one injury that occurred on K-12 school grounds between 1990 and 2016. The investigators sought to better understand the nature of the problem and clarify the types of shooting incidents occurring in schools, provide information on the characteristics of school shooters, and compare fatal shooting incidents to events where only injuries resulted to identify intervention points that could be exploited to reduce the harm caused by shootings. To accomplish these objectives, the investigators used quantitative multivariate and qualitative case studies research methods to document where and when school violence occurs, and highlight key incident and perpetrator level characteristics to help law enforcement and school administrators differentiate between the kinds of school shootings that exist, to further policy responses that are appropriate for individuals and communities.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed. This study was a secondary analysis of data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and National Incidents Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for the period 1998-2007. The analysis calculates two separate measures of the incidents of violence that occurred during burglaries. The study addressed the following research questions: Is burglary a violent crime? Are different levels of violence associated with residential versus nonresidential burglaries? How frequently is a household member present during a residential burglary? How frequently does violence occur in the commission of a burglary? What forms does burglary-related violence take? Are there differences in rates of violence between attempted and completed burglaries? What constitutes the crime of burglary in current statutory law? How do the federal government and the various states define burglary (grades and elements)? Does statutory law comport with empirical observations of what the typical characteristics of acts of burglary are? The SPSS code distributed here alters an existing dataset drawn from pre-existing studies. In order to use this code users must first create the original data file drawn from National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and National Incidents Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data from the period of 1998-2007. All data used for this study are publicly available through ICPSR. See the variable description section for a comprehensive list of, and direct links to, all datasets used to create this original dataset.

In 2022, about *********** violent crimes were reported in the United States. Of these, about ************ were simple assault. A further ************ violent crimes were domestic violence.

The research team collected data on homicide, robbery, and assault offending from 1984-2006 for youth 13 to 24 years of age in 91 of the 100 largest cities in the United States (based on the 1980 Census) from various existing data sources. Data on youth homicide perpetration were acquired from the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) and data on nonlethal youth violence (robbery and assault) were obtained from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Annual homicide, robbery, and assault arrest rates per 100,000 age-specific populations (i.e., 13 to 17 and 18 to 24 year olds) were calculated by year for each city in the study. Data on city characteristics were derived from several sources including the County and City Data Books, SHR, and the Vital Statistics Multiple Cause of Death File. The research team constructed a dataset representing lethal and nonlethal offending at the city level for 91 cities over the 23-year period from 1984 to 2006, resulting in 2,093 city year observations.

To further the understanding of violence against women, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), jointly sponsored the National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey. To provide a context in which to place women's experiences, the NVAW Survey sampled both women and men. Completed interviews were obtained from 8,000 women and 8,005 men who were 18 years of age or older residing in households throughout the United States. The female version of the survey was fielded from November 1995 to May 1996. The male version of the survey was fielded during February to May 1996. Spanish versions of both the male and female surveys were fielded from April to May 1996. Respondents to the NVAW Survey were queried about (1) their general fear of violence and the ways in which they managed their fears, (2) emotional abuse they had experienced by marital and cohabitating partners, (3) physical assault they had experienced as children by adult caretakers, (4) physical assault they had experienced as adults by any type of perpetrator, (5) forcible rape or stalking they had experienced by any type of perpetrator, and (6) incidents of threatened violence they had experienced by any type of perpetrator. Respondents disclosing victimization were asked detailed questions about the characteristics and consequences of victimization as they experienced it, including injuries sustained and use of medical services. Incidents were recorded that had occurred at any time during the respondent's lifetime and also those that occurred within the 12 months prior to the interview. Data were gathered on both male-to-female and female-to-male intimate partner victimization as well as abuse by same-sex partners. Due to the sensitive nature of the survey, female respondents were interviewed by female interviewers. In order to test for possible bias caused by the gender of the interviewers when speaking to men, a split sample was used so that half of the male respondents had female interviewers and the other half had male interviewers. The questionnaires contained 14 sections, each covering a different topic, as follows. Section A: Respondents' fears of different types of violence, and behaviors they had adopted to accommodate those fears. Section B: Respondent demographics and household characteristics. Section C: The number of current and past marital and opposite-sex and same-sex cohabitating relationships of the respondent. Section D: Characteristics of the respondent's current relationship and the demographics and other characteristics of their spouse and/or partner. Section E: Power, control, and emotional abuse by each spouse or partner. Sections F through I: Screening for incidents of rape, physical assault, stalking, and threat victimization, respectively. Sections J through M: Detailed information on each incident of rape, physical assault, stalking, and threat victimization, respectively, reported by the respondent for each type of perpetrator identified in the victimization screening section. Section N: Violence in the respondent's current relationship, including steps taken because of violence in the relationship and whether the violent behavior had stopped. The section concluded with items to assess if the respondent had symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Other variables in the data include interviewer gender, respondent gender, number of adult women and adult men in the household, number of different telephones in the household, and region code.

This study examined the effect of exposure to violence on juveniles. It was specifically concerned with juveniles' perceptions of violence in schools and communities and how exposure to violence served as a risk factor for juvenile drug and alcohol use and participation in other delinquent activities. It also sought to develop a more complete picture of the context and consequences of violence in schools. The data for this study were drawn from the NATIONAL SURVEY OF ADOLESCENTS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1995 (ICPSR 2833). The data were collected through a national probability telephone sample of 4,023 juveniles and their parents or guardians. The current study drew primarily on the questions that were asked about respondents' experiences witnessing violence, their own victimization, peer and family deviance, their own delinquent activities, and drug and alcohol use.

The data, code, and codebooks are used to replicate the findings presented in the article "Reassessing Support for Political Aggression and Violence in the United States"

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.The objective of this project was to enhance understanding of violent disputes by examining the use of aggression to rectify a perceived wrong. It also sought to identify the factors that determine if retaliatory violence occurs within disputes as well as to understand how long retaliatory disputes last, and what factors lead to the termination of such disputes. This collection includes two SPSS data files: "Dispute_Database_for_NACJD.sav" with 40 variables and 111 cases and "Northeastern_City_Violence_Database_NACJD_submission.sav" with 164 variables and 1,303 cases.

Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism: Percentile Rank in United States was reported at 47.39 % in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism: Percentile Rank - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on October of 2025.

THIS DATASET WAS LAST UPDATED AT 2:12 AM EASTERN ON OCT. 22

OVERVIEW

2019 had the most mass killings since at least the 1970s, according to the Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings Database.

In all, there were 45 mass killings, defined as when four or more people are killed excluding the perpetrator. Of those, 33 were mass shootings . This summer was especially violent, with three high-profile public mass shootings occurring in the span of just four weeks, leaving 38 killed and 66 injured.

A total of 229 people died in mass killings in 2019.

The AP's analysis found that more than 50% of the incidents were family annihilations, which is similar to prior years. Although they are far less common, the 9 public mass shootings during the year were the most deadly type of mass murder, resulting in 73 people's deaths, not including the assailants.

One-third of the offenders died at the scene of the killing or soon after, half from suicides.

About this Dataset

The Associated Press/USA TODAY/Northeastern University Mass Killings database tracks all U.S. homicides since 2006 involving four or more people killed (not including the offender) over a short period of time (24 hours) regardless of weapon, location, victim-offender relationship or motive. The database includes information on these and other characteristics concerning the incidents, offenders, and victims.

The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern database represents the most complete tracking of mass murders by the above definition currently available. Other efforts, such as the Gun Violence Archive or Everytown for Gun Safety may include events that do not meet our criteria, but a review of these sites and others indicates that this database contains every event that matches the definition, including some not tracked by other organizations.

This data will be updated periodically and can be used as an ongoing resource to help cover these events.

Using this Dataset

To get basic counts of incidents of mass killings and mass shootings by year nationwide, use these queries:

Mass killings by year

Mass shootings by year

To get these counts just for your state:

Filter killings by state

Definition of "mass murder"

Mass murder is defined as the intentional killing of four or more victims by any means within a 24-hour period, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offender(s). The standard of four or more dead was initially set by the FBI.

This definition does not exclude cases based on method (e.g., shootings only), type or motivation (e.g., public only), victim-offender relationship (e.g., strangers only), or number of locations (e.g., one). The time frame of 24 hours was chosen to eliminate conflation with spree killers, who kill multiple victims in quick succession in different locations or incidents, and to satisfy the traditional requirement of occurring in a “single incident.”

Offenders who commit mass murder during a spree (before or after committing additional homicides) are included in the database, and all victims within seven days of the mass murder are included in the victim count. Negligent homicides related to driving under the influence or accidental fires are excluded due to the lack of offender intent. Only incidents occurring within the 50 states and Washington D.C. are considered.

Methodology

Project researchers first identified potential incidents using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). Homicide incidents in the SHR were flagged as potential mass murder cases if four or more victims were reported on the same record, and the type of death was murder or non-negligent manslaughter.

Cases were subsequently verified utilizing media accounts, court documents, academic journal articles, books, and local law enforcement records obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Each data point was corroborated by multiple sources, which were compiled into a single document to assess the quality of information.

In case(s) of contradiction among sources, official law enforcement or court records were used, when available, followed by the most recent media or academic source.

Case information was subsequently compared with every other known mass murder database to ensure reliability and validity. Incidents listed in the SHR that could not be independently verified were excluded from the database.

Project researchers also conducted extensive searches for incidents not reported in the SHR during the time period, utilizing internet search engines, Lexis-Nexis, and Newspapers.com. Search terms include: [number] dead, [number] killed, [number] slain, [number] murdered, [number] homicide, mass murder, mass shooting, massacre, rampage, family killing, familicide, and arson murder. Offender, victim, and location names were also directly searched when available.

This project started at USA TODAY in 2012.

Contacts

Contact AP Data Editor Justin Myers with questions, suggestions or comments about this dataset at jmyers@ap.org. The Northeastern University researcher working with AP and USA TODAY is Professor James Alan Fox, who can be reached at j.fox@northeastern.edu or 617-416-4400.

This study of violent incidents among middle- and high-school students focused not only on the types and frequency of these incidents, but also on their dynamics -- the locations, the opening moves, the relationship between the disputants, the goals and justifications of the aggressor, the role of third parties, and other factors. For this study, violence was defined as an act carried out with the intention, or perceived intention, of physically injuring another person, and the "opening move" was defined as the action of a respondent, antagonist, or third party that was viewed as beginning the violent incident. Data were obtained from interviews with 70 boys and 40 girls who attended public schools with populations that had high rates of violence. About half of the students came from a middle school in an economically disadvantaged African-American section of a large southern city. The neighborhood the school served, which included a public housing project, had some of the country's highest rates of reported violent crime. The other half of the sample were volunteers from an alternative high school attended by students who had committed serious violations of school rules, largely involving illegal drugs, possession of handguns, or fighting. Many students in this high school, which is located in a large city in the southern part of the Midwest, came from high-crime areas, including public housing communities. The interviews were open-ended, with the students encouraged to speak at length about any violent incidents in school, at home, or in the neighborhood in which they had been involved. The 110 interviews yielded 250 incidents and are presented as text files, Parts 3 and 4. The interview transcriptions were then reduced to a quantitative database with the incident as the unit of analysis (Part 1). Incidents were diagrammed, and events in each sequence were coded and grouped to show the typical patterns and sub-patterns in the interactions. Explanations the students offered for the violent-incident behavior were grouped into two categories: (1) "justifications," in which the young people accepted responsibility for their violent actions but denied that the actions were wrong, and (2) "excuses," in which the young people admitted the act was wrong but denied responsibility. Every case in the incident database had at least one physical indicator of force or violence. The respondent-level file (Part 2) was created from the incident-level file using the AGGREGATE procedure in SPSS. Variables in Part 1 include the sex, grade, and age of the respondent, the sex and estimated age of the antagonist, the relationship between respondent and antagonist, the nature and _location of the opening move, the respondent's response to the opening move, persons present during the incident, the respondent's emotions during the incident, the person who ended the fight, punishments imposed due to the incident, whether the respondent was arrested, and the duration of the incident. Additional items cover the number of times during the incident that something was thrown, the respondent was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten up, cut, or bruised, was threatened with a knife or gun, or a knife or gun was used on the respondent. Variables in Part 2 include the respondent's age, gender, race, and grade at the time of the interview, the number of incidents per respondent, if the respondent was an armed robber or a victim of an armed robbery, and whether the respondent had something thrown at him/her, was pushed, slapped, or spanked, was kicked, bit, or hit with a fist or with something else, was beaten up, was threatened with a knife or gun, or had a knife or gun used on him/her.

Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism: Estimate in United States was reported at 0.02942 in 2023, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. United States - Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism: Estimate - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on October of 2025.

This dataset shows City level data for all over the United States, and has various attributes for different crimes. Cities are shown as Latitude and longitude points. Attributes include murder, manslaughter, violent crimes, arson, motor vehicle theft, property crimes, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, theft, and rape. Data was provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Source: FBI URL: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_08.html

The purpose of the study was to better understand the factors associated with police decisions to make an arrest or not in cases of heterosexual partner violence and how these decisions vary across jurisdictions. The study utilized data from three large national datasets: the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for the year 2003, the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) for the years 2000 and 2003, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services Area Resource File (ARF) for the year 2003. Researchers also developed a database of domestic violence state arrest laws including arrest type (mandatory, discretionary, or preferred) and primary aggressor statutes. Next, the research team merged these four databases into one, with incident being the unit of analysis. As a further step, the research team conducted spatial analysis to examine the impact of spatial autocorrelation in arrest decisions by police organizations on the results of statistical analyses. The dependent variable for this study was arrest outcome, defined as no arrest, single male arrest, single female arrest, and dual arrest for an act of violence against an intimate partner. The primary independent variables were divided into three categories: incident factors, police organizational factors, and community factors.