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.

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.

In 2021, there were about 123,000 serious violent crimes committed by youths between the ages of 12 and 17 in the United States, an increase from the year before. However, this is still a significant decrease from 1994 levels, when violent crimes committed by youths hit a peak at over 1.05 million serious crimes.

Youth and crime

According to the most recent data, criminal youths in the United States continue to participate in violent crimes each year. In 2022, there were over 1,000 murder offenders between the ages of 13 and 16 in the United States. Studies have also shown that crimes are reported against children at U.S. schools, with students aged between 12 and 14 years found more likely to be victims of violent crime and theft. However, the number of adolescent violent crime victims in the U.S. far surpasses the number of adolescent perpetrators. The number of adolescent victims has also declined significantly since the early 1990s, following the national downward trend of violent crime.

Overall downward trends

There is not only a downward trend in the number of violent crimes committed by youths, but also in the share of crimes involving youths. On a national level, the crime rate has also decreased in almost every state, showing that the country is becoming safer as a whole.

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.

In 2019, there were six deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States, compared to 5.9 deaths by homicide in the previous year. This is an increase from 1950, when there were 5.1 deaths by homicide per 100,000 resident population in the United States. However, within the provided time period, the death rate for homicide in the U.S. was highest in 1980, when there were 10.4 deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States.

Homicides in the United States

The term homicide is used when a human being is killed by another human being. Criminal homicide takes several forms, for example murder; but homicide is not always a crime, it also includes affirmative defense, insanity, self-defense or the execution of convicted criminals. In the United States, youth homicide has especially been seen as a problem of urban areas, due to poverty, limited adult supervision, involvement in drug and gang activities, and school failure. Both homicide rates and suicide rates in the U.S. among people aged 20 to 24 and teenagers aged 15 to 19 have vastly increased since 2001.

In 2021, around 9.7 percent of serious violent crime cases in the United States involved teenagers, an increase from the previous year, where 7.5 percent of serious violent crimes involved teenagers. The share of serious violent crimes involving children between 12 and 17 years old reached a peak in 1994, at 25.1 percent.

This research project was designed as a replication and extension of earlier research on how childhood victimization relates to delinquency, adult criminality, and violent criminal behavior (CHILD ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN A MIDWEST METROPOLITAN AREA OF THE UNITED STATES, 1967-1988 (ICPSR 9480)). The study consisted of a sample of abused and neglected children who were made dependents of the Superior Court of a large urban county in the Northwest between 1980 and 1984, and a matched control group of children. Dependency records were obtained from the county court house. Control match criteria were collected from Department of Health birth records data. Type of abuse/neglect precipitating the dependency petition was collected and coded using a modified version of the Maltreatment Classification Coding Scheme (MCS). Data on juvenile arrests from juvenile court records, including both number and types, were collected for each abused and/or neglected youth and each matched control subject. Adult criminal arrests, excluding routine traffic offenses, for all abused and neglected subjects and matched controls were collected from local, county, state, and federal law enforcement sources. A subset of arrests consisting of violent crimes was developed as a key outcome of interest. Major types of variables included in this study are demographics, criminal records, dependency records (only for those subjects abused/neglected as children), including type and severity of child abuse/neglect, and census socioeconomic variables. Several derived variables were also included.

San Diego Region and United States Violent and Property Crime Rates from 1980 - 2020 in Long Data Format.

This research project was designed as a replication and extension of earlier research on how childhood victimization relates to delinquency, adult criminality, and violent criminal behavior (CHILD ABUSE, NEGLECT, AND VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR IN A MIDWEST METROPOLITAN AREA OF THE UNITED STATES, 1967-1988 (ICPSR 9480)). The study consisted of a sample of abused and neglected children who were made dependents of the Superior Court of a large urban county in the Northwest between 1980 and 1984, and a matched control group of children. Dependency records were obtained from the county court house. Control match criteria were collected from Department of Health birth records data. Type of abuse/neglect precipitating the dependency petition was collected and coded using a modified version of the Maltreatment Classification Coding Scheme (MCS). Data on juvenile arrests from juvenile court records, including both number and types, were collected for each abused and/or neglected youth and each matched control subject. Adult criminal arrests, excluding routine traffic offenses, for all abused and neglected subjects and matched controls were collected from local, county, state, and federal law enforcement sources. A subset of arrests consisting of violent crimes was developed as a key outcome of interest. Major types of variables included in this study are demographics, criminal records, dependency records (only for those subjects abused/neglected as children), including type and severity of child abuse/neglect, and census socioeconomic variables. Several derived variables were also included.

This research project examined rural and urban trends in family and intimate partner homicide for the 20-year period from 1980 through 1999. The construct of place served as a backdrop against which changes in trends in family/partner homicide were tracked, and against which various independent measures that purportedly explain variation in the rates were tested. The project merged data from several sources. The offender data file from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) series for 1980 through 1999 was the primary data source. Data for arrests for violent crime, drug, and alcohol-related offenses were obtained from the FBI Report A Arrest File. Population, population density, and race (and racial segregation) data from the decennial U.S. Census for 1980, 1990, and 2000 were also obtained. Data on hospitals, educational attainment, unemployment, and per capita income were obtained from the 2002 Area Resource File (ARF). The total number of proprietors (farm and non-farm) in the United States by state and county for each year were provided by the Regional Economic Profiles data. The project's population and proximity indicator used four categories: metropolitan, nonmetropolitan populations adjacent to a metropolitan area, nonmetropolitan populations not adjacent to a metropolitan area, and rural. Data include homicide rates for 1980 through 1999 for intimate partner homicide, family homicide, all other homicide, and all homicide. Additional variables are included as measures of community socioeconomic distress, such as residential overcrowding, isolation, traditionalist views of women and family, lack of access to health care, and substance abuse. Five-year averages are included for each of the rates and measures listed above.

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 project used data from multiple sources-the area-identified National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS, 2008-2012), and data from other public data sources such as the American Community Survey (ACS) and the decennial Census data-to study how the changing geography of American immigration has influenced violent victimization among different racial and ethnic groups, particularly Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites.This collection includes three Stata data files:"Data_File1_county_foreignborn_1980_2010.dta" with 6 variables and 3,103 cases"Data_File2_county_variables_2007_2012.dta" with 19 variables and 18,618 cases"Data_File3_tract_variables_2007_2012.dta" with 16 variables and 440,083 cases.The area-identified NCVS data are only accessible through the Census Research Data Centers and could not be archived.

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.

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 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.

In 2021, about 48.7 percent of reported juvenile crimes involved multiple offenders in the United States. This is a slight decrease from the previous year, when 52.9 percent of reported juvenile crimes involved multiple offenders.

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), previously the National Crime Survey (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 survey is administered by the United States Census Bureau (under the United States Department of Commerce) on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics (under the United States Department of Justice). Occasionally there have been extract or supplement files created from the NCVS and NCS data series. This extract contains two data files, a weighted person-based file, and a weighted incident-based file, which contain the "core" counties within the top 40 National Crime Victimization Survey Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs). Core counties within these MSAs are defined as those self-representing primary sampling units that are common to the MSA definitions determined by the Office of Management and Budget for the 1970-based, 1980-based, and 1990-based sample designs. Each MSA is comprised of only the core counties and not all counties within the MSA. The person-based file contains select household and person variables for all people in NCVS-interviewed households in the core counties of the 40 largest MSAs from January 1979 through December 2004. The incident-based file contains select household, person, and incident variables for persons who reported a violent crime within any of the core counties of the 40 largest MSAs from January 1979 through December 2004. Household, person, and incident information for persons reporting non-violent crime are excluded from this file. The 40 largest MSAs were determined based on the number of household interviews in an MSA.

These data assess the effects of the risk of local jail incarceration and of police aggressiveness in patrol style on rates of violent offending. The collection includes arrest rates for public order offenses, size of county jail populations, and numbers of new prison admissions as they relate to arrest rates for index (serious) crimes. Data were collected from seven sources for each city. CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, 1980 [UNITED STATES]: SUMMARY TAPE FILE 1A (ICPSR 7941), provided county-level data on number of persons by race, age, and age by race, number of persons in households, and types of households within each county. CENSUS OF POPULATION AND HOUSING, 1980 [UNITED STATES]: SUMMARY TAPE FILE 3A (ICPSR 8071), measured at the city level, provided data on total population, race, age, marital status by sex, persons in household, number of households, housing, children, and families above and below the poverty level by race, employment by race, and income by race within each city. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 1980 data provided variables on total offenses and offense rates per 100,000 persons for homicides, rapes, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle offenses, and arson. Data from the FBI for 1980-1982, averaged per 100,000, provided variables for the above offenses by sex, age, and race, and the Uniform Crime Report arrest rates for index crimes within each city. The NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS for 1978 and 1983 (ICPSR 7737 and ICPSR 8203), aggregated to the county level, provided variables on jail capacity, number of inmates being held by sex, race, and status of inmate's case (awaiting trial, awaiting sentence, serving sentence, and technical violations), average daily jail populations, number of staff by full-time and part-time, number of volunteers, and number of correctional officers. The JUVENILE DETENTION AND CORRECTIONAL FACILITY CENSUS for 1979 and 1982-1983 (ICPSR 7846 and 8205), aggregated to the county level, provided data on the number of individuals being held by type of crime and sex, as well as age of juvenile offenders by sex, average daily prison population, and payroll and other expenditures for the institutions.

San Diego Region and United States Violent and Property Crime Rates from 1980 - 2022 in Long Data Format.

In 2023, the rate of forcible rapes in the United States stood at 38 per 100,000 inhabitants. As the FBI revised the definition of rape in 2013, the 2023 rate is a slight decrease from 1990, when there were 41.2 forcible rapes per 100,000 inhabitants. What is forcible rape? According to the FBI, forcible rape is defined as “sexual penetration, no matter how slight, with a body part or object without the consent of the victim.” This definition changed in 2013 from the previous definition, which specified “carnal knowledge of a female victim forcibly and against her will.” Attempted rape was included in the previous definition, but statutory rape and other sexual offenses were excluded. The old definition was seen as problematic, as people of any gender can be raped. Since the revision of the definition of rape, reported rapes increased, although it is not clear if this is due to the revised definition or if the rate itself has increased. Rape in the United States While rape and sexual assault have been extensively talked about in the U.S. in recent years, especially since the start of the #metoo movement, there is still a large number of sexual offences committed each year. Sadly, the majority of sex offences in the U.S. are carried out against individuals age 20 and under. Astoundingly, the Anchorage, Alaska metropolitan area had the highest rape rate in the United States in 2023, followed by St Joseph in Missouri and Kansas. Since rape and sexual assault continue to be underreported in the United States, it is important to find a solution to this devastating problem.

This indicator shows how many days per year were assessed to have air quality that was worse than “moderate” in Champaign County, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (U.S. EPA) Air Quality Index Reports. The period of analysis is 1980-2024, and the U.S. EPA’s air quality ratings analyzed here are as follows, from best to worst: “good,” “moderate,” “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” “unhealthy,” “very unhealthy,” and "hazardous."[1]

In 2024, the number of days rated to have air quality worse than moderate was 0. This is a significant decrease from the 13 days in 2023 in the same category, the highest in the 21st century. That figure is likely due to the air pollution created by the unprecedented Canadian wildfire smoke in Summer 2023.

While there has been no consistent year-to-year trend in the number of days per year rated to have air quality worse than moderate, the number of days in peak years had decreased from 2000 through 2022. Where peak years before 2000 had between one and two dozen days with air quality worse than moderate (e.g., 1983, 18 days; 1988, 23 days; 1994, 17 days; 1999, 24 days), the year with the greatest number of days with air quality worse than moderate from 2000-2022 was 2002, with 10 days. There were several years between 2006 and 2022 that had no days with air quality worse than moderate.

This data is sourced from the U.S. EPA’s Air Quality Index Reports. The reports are released annually, and our period of analysis is 1980-2024. The Air Quality Index Report websites does caution that "[a]ir pollution levels measured at a particular monitoring site are not necessarily representative of the air quality for an entire county or urban area," and recommends that data users do not compare air quality between different locations[2].

[1] Environmental Protection Agency. (1980-2024). Air Quality Index Reports. (Accessed 13 June 2025).

[2] Ibid.

Source: Environmental Protection Agency. (1980-2024). Air Quality Index Reports. https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/air-quality-index-report. (Accessed 13 June 2025).