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 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 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 dataset contains county-level totals for the years 2002-2014 for eight types of crime: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson. These crimes are classed as Part I criminal offenses by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in their Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. Each record in the dataset represents the total of each type of criminal offense reported in (or, in the case of missing data, attributed to) the county in a given year.

In 2023, a total of ******* violent crimes were committed in Texas, the most out of any U.S. state. New York followed, with ******* violent crimes committed. California, Illinois, and Michigan rounded out the top five states for violent crimes in that year.

This project was designed to isolate the effects that individual crimes have on wage rates and housing prices, as gauged by individuals' and households' decisionmaking preferences changing over time. Additionally, this project sought to compute a dollar value that individuals would bear in their wages and housing costs to reduce the rates of specific crimes. The study used multiple decades of information obtained from counties across the United States to create a panel dataset. This approach was designed to compensate for the problem of collinearity by tracking how housing and occupation choices within particular locations changed over the decade considering all amenities or disamenities, including specific crime rates. Census data were obtained for this project from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) constructed by Ruggles and Sobek (1997). Crime data were obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Other data were collected from the American Chamber of Commerce Researchers Association, County and City Data Book, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. Independent variables for the Wages Data (Part 1) include years of education, school enrollment, sex, ability to speak English well, race, veteran status, employment status, and occupation and industry. Independent variables for the Housing Data (Part 2) include number of bedrooms, number of other rooms, building age, whether unit was a condominium or detached single-family house, acreage, and whether the unit had a kitchen, plumbing, public sewers, and water service. Both files include the following variables as separating factors: census geographic division, cost-of-living index, percentage unemployed, percentage vacant housing, labor force employed in manufacturing, living near a coastline, living or working in the central city, per capita local taxes, per capita intergovernmental revenue, per capita property taxes, population density, and commute time to work. Lastly, the following variables measured amenities or disamenities: average precipitation, temperature, windspeed, sunshine, humidity, teacher-pupil ratio, number of Superfund sites, total suspended particulate in air, and rates of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, auto theft, violent crimes, and property crimes.

This table contains data on the rate of violent crime (crimes per 1,000 population) for California, its regions, counties, cities and towns. Crime and population data are from the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Uniform Crime Reports. Rates above the city/town level include data from city, university and college, county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies. The table is part of a series of indicators in the Healthy Communities Data and Indicators Project of the Office of Health Equity. Ten percent of all deaths in young California adults aged 15-44 years are related to assault and homicide. In 2010, California law enforcement agencies reported 1,809 murders, 8,331 rapes, and over 95,000 aggravated assaults. African Americans in California are 11 times more likely to die of assault and homicide than Whites. More information about the data table and a data dictionary can be found in the About/Attachments section.

The graph illustrates the murder rate in the United States from 1985 to 2023. The x-axis represents the years, labeled with two-digit abbreviations from '85 to '23, while the y-axis shows the annual murder rate per 100,000 individuals. Throughout this 39-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.

These data provide information on the number of arrests reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program each year by police agencies in the United States. These arrest reports provide data on 43 offenses including violent crime, drug use, gambling, and larceny. The data received by ICPSR were structured as a hierarchical file containing, per reporting police agency: an agency header record, and 1 to 49 detail offense records containing the counts of arrests by age, sex, and race for a particular offense. ICPSR restructured the original data to logical record length format with the agency header record variables copied onto the detail records. Consequently, each record contains arrest counts for a particular agency-offense.

In 2022, there were slightly more female victims of violent crime than male victims, with about 1,749,030 male victims and 1,762,840 female victims. These figures are a significant increase from the previous year, when there were 1,456,310 male victims and 1,278,390.

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 284.4 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.

Graph and download economic data for Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in King County, WA (DISCONTINUED) (FBITC053033) from 2005 to 2021 about King County, WA; crime; violent crime; property crime; Seattle; WA; and USA.

Since 1930, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to serve as periodic nationwide assessments of reported crimes not available elsewhere in the criminal justice system. Seven main classifications of crime were chosen to gauge fluctuations in the overall volume and rate of crime. These seven classifications that eventually became known as the Crime Index included the violent crimes of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, and the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. By congressional mandate, arson was added as the eighth Index offense in 1979. Arson is defined as any willful or malicious burning or attempt to burn, with or without intent to defraud, a dwelling house, public building, motor vehicle or aircraft, personal property of another, etc. The arson data files include monthly data on the number of arson offenses reported and the number of offenses cleared by arrest or other means. The counts include all reports of arson received from victims, officers who discovered infractions, or other sources.

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. This dataset represents the revised version of the NCVS on a collection year basis for 2016. A collection year contains records from interviews conducted in the 12 months of the given year. Under the collection year format, victimizations are counted in the year the interview is conducted, regardless of the year when the crime incident occurred. The 2016 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) violent and property crime estimates were significantly higher than 2015, but it was not possible to determine the degree to which the change in rates resulted from the sample redesign rather than real changes in U.S. victimization levels. Therefore, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) examined the 2015 and 2016 victimization rates separately for new and continuing sample counties in the 2016 Criminal Victimization bulletin. The BJS requested that the Census Bureau create a 2016 revised file with outgoing county interviews from July-December 2015, continuing county interviews from January-June 2016, and all interviews (continuing and new counties) from July-December 2016. In other words, the outgoing 2015 cases replaced the new 2016 cases in the first half of 2016. The files in this study serve as a separate research file to allow data users to make comparisons between 2015, 2016, and 2017 NCVS estimates using a nationally representative sample. It provides a sample that still represents the entire country but does not have the inflated crime rates seen in the new counties in 2016.

Graph and download economic data for Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Montgomery County, IN (DISCONTINUED) (FBITC018107) from 2009 to 2021 about Montgomery County, IN; crime; violent crime; property crime; IN; and USA.

Graph and download economic data for Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Cleveland County, AR (DISCONTINUED) (FBITC005025) from 2004 to 2021 about Cleveland County, AR; Pine Bluff; crime; violent crime; property crime; AR; and USA.

These data provide information on the number of arrests reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program each year by police agencies in the United States. These arrest reports provide data on 43 offenses including violent crime, drug use, gambling, and larceny. The data received by ICPSR were structured as a hierarchical file containing (per reporting police agency) an agency header record, 1 to 12 monthly header records, and 1 to 43 detail offense records containing the counts of arrests by age, sex, and race for a particular offense. ICPSR restructured the original data to a rectangular format.

Graph and download economic data for Combined Violent and Property Crime Offenses Known to Law Enforcement in Clark County, MO (DISCONTINUED) (FBITC029045) from 2005 to 2021 about Clark County, MO; crime; violent crime; property crime; MO; and USA.

The primary objective of this project was to explore the familial, physical, psychological, social, and cultural antecedents and correlates of violent criminal offending. This research used an extensive longitudinal database collected on 1,345 young adult male offenders admitted to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Tallahassee, Florida, from November 3, 1970, to November 2, 1972. Using FBI arrest records ("rap sheets"), each inmate was classified on the basis of the National Crime Information Center Uniform Offense Codes into one of four distinct categories: (1) "angry violent," in which the apparent goal was to injure the victim, (2) "instrumentally violent," in which the aggressive behavior was a means to an end (as in a robbery), (3) "potentially violent," as evidenced by making threats or carrying weapons but in which the offender was not accused of any violent offenses, and (4) "nonviolent," in which the offender had not been charged with violent criminal behavior. Violent offenders were also subdivided into those who had been repetitively violent and those who had been charged with just one violent offense. As part of the classification process, each inmate was administered an extensive battery of tests by the research project staff. The two primary personality assessment instruments utilized were the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI). Each inmate's caseworker filled out a series of of standard Bureau of Prisons forms recording the results of the medical, educational, and psychological evaluations, as well as salient aspects of the case and criminal history. The researchers also obtained copies of each offender's Presentence Investigation Report (PSI) that had been prepared by the federal probation officer, and then devised a series of scales to quantify the PSI data. In addition, an hour-long structured intake interview was administered to each inmate by his team psychologist. Global scales were constructed from these intake interviews. After each interview, the psychologists performed an evaluative Q-sort. Nine scales were later constructed based on these Q-sorts. Also, every dormitory officer and every work supervisor completed scales assessing each subject's interpersonal adjustment and work performance at 90-day intervals. Immediately prior to release, as many inmates as possible were reinterviewed and retested on the MMPI and the CPI. Follow-ups using FBI rap sheets were conducted in 1976 and 1984. Variables obtained from the Bureau of Prisons forms include age upon entry, race, marital status, age at first arrest, number of prior adult convictions, commitment offense(s), highest school grade completed, drug dependency, and alcoholism. Scales developed from the PSIs provide data on father, mother, and siblings, family incohesiveness, adequacy of childhood dwelling, social deviance of family, school problems, employment problems, achievement motivation, problems with interpersonal relations, authority conflicts, childhood and adolescent or adult maladjustment and deviance, poor physical health, juvenile conviction record, adult arrest and conviction record, violence of offense, group influence on illegal behavior, and prior prison adjustment. The intake interview inquired about the developmental family history and the child's development, the inmate's marriage, educational, and work history and attitudes, attitudes toward sex, military service and attitudes, self-reported use of alcohol and other substances, religious preferences and practices, and problems during any previous confinements. Scales based on the psychologists' Q-sorts evaluated aggression, hostility avoidance, authority conflict, sociability, social withdrawal, social/emotional constriction, passivity, dominance, and adaptation to the environment. Data are also provided on global dorm adjustment and the number of shots, cell house days, sick calls, and infractions for the offenders' first and second 90-day periods at the FCI.

In 2023, around **** percent of persons between the ages of 12 and 17 years old in the United States experienced one or more violent victimizations. This was a decrease from the previous year, when **** percent of children in the same age group were the victim of a violent crime.