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 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.

To estimate national trends of crime, the FBI collects crime reports from law enforcement agencies across the country. In 2022, Delaware, the District of Columbia, and Oklahoma had perfect participation rates, with 100 percent of law enforcement agencies reporting crime data to the FBI in those states. In contrast, the state of Florida had the lowest share of law enforcement agencies who reported crime data to the FBI in the United States, at *** percent. An unreliable source? Along with being the principal investigative agency of the U.S. federal government, the FBI is also in charge of tracking crimes committed in the United States. In recent years, however, the FBI made significant changes to their crime reporting system, requiring a more detailed input on how agencies report their data. Consequently, less crime data has been reported and the FBI has come under criticism as an unreliable source on crime in the United States. In 2022, the FBI was found to rank low on trustworthiness for Americans when compared to other government agencies, further demonstrating the need for transparent and accurate data. Importance of crime rates As crime and policing data can help to analyze emerging issues and policy responses, the inaccuracy of the FBI’s crime reporting system may lead to misinformation which could be used to impact elections and the beliefs of the American public. In addition, the lack of crime data from Republican states such as Florida may prove problematic as 78 percent of Republicans said that crime was a very important issue for them in midterm elections.

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. Law enforcement agencies contribute reports either directly or through their state reporting programs. Each year, summary data are 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 Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest data files include monthly data on the number of Crime Index offenses reported and the number of offenses cleared by arrest or other means. The counts include all reports of Index crimes (excluding arson) received from victims, officers who discovered infractions, or other sources.

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.

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.

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.

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 2024, about 64 percent of Americans felt there is more crime now in the United States than there was a year ago. A further 29 percent of survey respondents said that there was less crime in the U.S. in 2024 than there was the year previous.

These data on 19th- and early 20th-century police department and arrest behavior were collected between 1975 and 1978 for a study of police and crime in the United States. Raw and aggregated time-series data are presented in Parts 1 and 3 on 23 American cities for most years during the period 1860-1920. The data were drawn from annual reports of police departments found in the Library of Congress or in newspapers and legislative reports located elsewhere. Variables in Part 1, for which the city is the unit of analysis, include arrests for drunkenness, conditional offenses and homicides, persons dismissed or held, police personnel, and population. Part 3 aggregates the data by year and reports some of these variables on a per capita basis, using a linear interpolation from the last decennial census to estimate population. Part 2 contains data for 267 United States cities for the period 1880-1890 and was generated from the 1880 federal census volume, REPORT ON THE DEFECTIVE, DEPENDENT, AND DELINQUENT CLASSES, published in 1888, and from the 1890 federal census volume, SOCIAL STATISTICS OF CITIES. Information includes police personnel and expenditures, arrests, persons held overnight, trains entering town, and population.

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.

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.

The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) is a part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In the late 1970s, the law enforcement community called for a thorough evaluative study of the UCR with the objective of recommending an expanded and enhanced UCR program to meet law enforcement needs into the 21st century. The FBI fully concurred with the need for an updated program to meet contemporary needs and provided its support, formulating a comprehensive redesign effort. Following a multiyear study, a "Blueprint for the Future of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program" was developed. Using the "Blueprint," and in consultation with local and state law enforcement executives, the FBI formulated new guidelines for the Uniform Crime Reports. The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) was implemented to meet these guidelines. NIBRS data are archived at ICPSR as 11 separate data files per year, which may be merged by using linkage variables. Prior to 2013 the data were archived and distributed as 13 separate data files, including three separate batch header record files. In 2013 the FBI combined the three batch header files into one file. Consequently, ICPSR instituted new file numbering for the 2013 data. NIBRS data focus on a variety of aspects of a crime incident. Part 2 (formerly Part 4), Administrative Segment, offers data on the incident itself (date and time). Each crime incident is delineated by one administrative segment record. Also provided are Part 3 (formerly Part 5), Offense Segment (offense type, location, weapon use, and bias motivation), Part 4 (formerly Part 6), Property Segment (type of property loss, property description, property value, drug type and quantity), Part 5 (formerly Part 7), Victim Segment (age, sex, race, ethnicity, and injuries), Part 6 (formerly Part 8), Offender Segment (age, sex, and race), and Part 7 (formerly Part 9), Arrestee Segment (arrest date, age, sex, race, and weapon use). The Batch Header Segment (Part 1, formerly Parts 1-3) separates and identifies individual police agencies by Originating Agency Identifier (ORI). Batch Header information, which is contained on three records for each ORI, includes agency name, geographic location, and population of the area. Part 8 (formerly Part 10), Group B Arrest Report Segment, includes arrestee data for Group B crimes. Window Segments files (Parts 9-11, formerly Parts 11-13) pertain to incidents for which the complete Group A Incident Report was not submitted to the FBI. In general, a Window Segment record will be generated if the incident occurred prior to January 1 of the previous year or if the incident occurred prior to when the agency started NIBRS reporting. As with the UCR, participation in NIBRS is voluntary on the part of law enforcement agencies. The data are not a representative sample of crime in the United States.

In 2023, the state with the highest crime rate in the United States per 100,000 inhabitants was New Mexico. That year, the crime rate was ******** crimes per 100,000 people. In comparison, New Hampshire had the lowest crime rate at ****** crimes per 100,000 people. Crime rate The crime rate in the United States has generally decreased over time. There are several factors attributed to the decrease in the crime rate across the United States. An increase in the number of police officers and an increase in income are some of the reasons for a decrease in the crime rate. Unfortunately, people of color have been disproportionately affected by crime rates, as they are more likely to be arrested for a crime versus a white person. Crime rates regionally The District of Columbia had the highest rate of reported violent crimes in the United States in 2023 per 100,000 inhabitants. The most common crime clearance type in metropolitan counties in the United States in 2020 was murder and non-negligent manslaughter. The second most dangerous city in the country in 2020 was Detroit. Detroit has faced severe levels of economic and demographic declines in the past years. Not only has the population decreased, the city has filed for bankruptcy. Despite the median household income increasing, the city still struggles financially.

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.

Investigator(s): United Nations Office at Vienna, R.W. Burnham, Helen Burnham, Bruce DiCristina, and Graeme Newman The United Nations Surveys of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (formerly known as the United Nations World Crime Surveys) series was begun in 1978 and is comprised of five quinquennial surveys covering the years 1970-1975, 1975-1980, 1980-1986, 1986-1990, and 1990-1994. The project was supported by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics, and conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Criminal Justice and Crime Prevention Branch, United Nations Office in Vienna. Data gathered on crime prevention and criminal justice among member nations provide information for policy development and program planning. The main objectives of the survey include: to conduct a more focused inquiry into the incidence of crime worldwide, to improve knowledge about the incidence of reported crime in the global development perspective and also international understanding of effective ways to counteract crime, to improve the dissemination globally of the information collected, to facilitate an overview of trends and interrelationships among various parts of the criminal justice system so as to promote informed decision-making in its administration, nationally and cross-nationally, and to serve as an instrument for strengthening cooperation among member states by putting the review and analysis of national crime-related data in a broader context. The surveys also provide a valuable source of charting trends in crime and criminal justice over two decades.

Alaska crime data from 2000 to present from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. Information includes data on both violent and property crime.The UCR Program's primary objective is to generate reliable information for use in law enforcement administration, operation, and management; over the years, however, the data have become one of the country’s leading social indicators. The program has been the starting place for law enforcement executives, students of criminal justice, researchers, members of the media, and the public at large seeking information on crime in the nation. The program was conceived in 1929 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police to meet the need for reliable uniform crime statistics for the nation. In 1930, the FBI was tasked with collecting, publishing, and archiving those statistics.Source: US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)This data has been visualized in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) format and is provided as a service in the DCRA Information Portal by the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development Division of Community and Regional Affairs (SOA DCCED DCRA), Research and Analysis section. SOA DCCED DCRA Research and Analysis is not the authoritative source for this data. For more information and for questions about this data, see: FBI UCR ProgramOffenses Known to Law Enforcement, by State by City, 2017 The FBI collects these data through the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Important note about rape data In 2013, the FBI’s UCR Program initiated the collection of rape data under a revised definition within the Summary Based Reporting System. The term “forcible” was removed from the offense name, and the definition was changed to “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” In 2016, the FBI Director approved the recommendation to discontinue the reporting of rape data using the UCR legacy definition beginning in 2017. General comment This table provides the volume of violent crime (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property crime (burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) as reported by city and town law enforcement agencies (listed alphabetically by state) that contributed data to the UCR Program. (Note: Arson is not included in the property crime total in this table; however, if complete arson data were provided, it will appear in the arson column.) Caution against ranking Readers should take into consideration relevant factors in addition to an area’s crime statistics when making any valid comparisons of crime among different locales. UCR Statistics: Their Proper Use provides more details. Methodology The data used in creating this table were from all city and town law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of complete offense data for 2017. Rape figures, and violent crime, which rape is a part, will not be published in this table for agencies submitting rape using the UCR legacy rape definition. The rape figures, and violent crime, which rape is a part, published in this table are from only those agencies using the UCR revised rape definition as well as converted data from agencies that reported data for rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object via NIBRS. The FBI does not publish arson data unless it receives data from either the agency or the state for all 12 months of the calendar year. When the FBI determines that an agency’s data collection methodology does not comply with national UCR guidelines, the figure(s) for that agency’s offense(s) will not be included in the table, and the discrepancy will be explained in a footnote. Population estimation For the 2017 population estimates used in this table, the FBI computed individual rates of growth from one year to the next for every city/town and county using 2010 decennial population counts and 2011 through 2016 population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Each agency’s rates of growth were averaged; that average was then applied and added to its 2016 Census population estimate to derive the agency’s 2017 population estimate.

In 2022, there were slightly more female victims of violent crime than male victims in the United States, with about ********* male victims and ********* female victims. These figures are a significant increase from the previous year, when there were ********* male victims and ********* female victims. 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 ***** 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.

In 2023, ********* property and violent crimes were reported in California - the most out of any state. Texas followed behind, with ******* reported crimes. However, as the FBI estimates national trends of crime by asking law enforcement agencies across the country to self-report their crime data, the reported number of crimes committed in each state is dependent upon whether they provided the information to the Bureau's crime reporting system. For example, the state of Florida reported only *** percent of their crime data in 2022, raising the question of whether Florida has again failed to report the majority of their crimes in 2023 and if they should be higher up on this list. As many states have neglected to report all of their crime data to the FBI in the last few years, the total numbers may not accurately represent the number of crimes committed in each state.

In 2023, the violent crime rate in the United States was at 374.4 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. However, the total rate of property crime was far higher, at 1,916.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.