By The Washington Times (U.S.) | Created at 2026-07-23 20:51:06 | Updated at 2026-08-07 23:39:53
2 weeks ago
Homicides are on track to hit their lowest point in U.S. recorded history amid an overall decline in crime nationwide, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s midyear report released Thursday.
The organization said this year’s drop in killings is already outpacing the reductions made in 2025 — which, prior to Thursday’s report, was expected to have the nation’s lowest murder rate since 1900 once the FBI publishes its annual crime review later this year.
“The new midyear data suggest that the 2026 homicide rate will likely dip further, again reaching a new historic low,” the Council on Criminal Justice wrote in its report. “The rate of reported homicides was 18% lower in the first half of 2026 than in the first half of 2025 in the 30 study cities providing data for that crime, representing 215 fewer homicides.”
The number of killings in the first six months of this year is 31% lower than the number of homicides documented in the first half of 2019, a key point of reference before the COVID-19 pandemic and riots in 2020 ignited a generational public safety crisis.
The report also said every violent crime and most property crime was lower between January and June of this year compared with the same period in 2019.
Among violent offenses, aggravated assaults fell by 3%, domestic violence were down by 7%, sexual assaults dropped 13%, shootings were down by 17% and, most dramatically, robberies dropped by 41% and carjackings plummeted by 51%.
For nonviolent crimes, commercial burglaries fell by 1%, car theft fell by 3%, drug offenses declined by 15%, larceny declined by 21% and in-home burglaries sank by 50%.
The only property crime above the 2019 level is shoplifting, which saw a 5% uptick in the first half of this year.
The encouraging news was met with little explanation as to why crime, especially homicides, has cratered after spiking between 2020-22.
The Council on Criminal Justice acknowledged that a variety of factors may have played a part in the crime decline, from changes in policing strategies and improvement in technology used by law enforcement to broader shifts in society.
But report co-authors Ernesto Lopez and Bobby Boxerman said bluntly that their findings are “not evidence of the success or failure of any policy or practice.”
Council CEO Adam Gelb stressed that in his own statement on the report.
“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map, in cities with different political leadership, housing and economic conditions, policing and prosecution strategies, violence reduction models, and levels of federal enforcement activity,” Mr. Gelb said. “Local policies and programs surely matter, but the striking consistency of the decline suggests that macro-level forces are exerting enormous influence as well.”
Despite Mr. Gelb’s emphasis on how uniform the crime decline has been between Republican and Democratic jurisdictions, the White House likely considers itself one of those “macro-level forces” that has reined in disorder.
The Trump administration this month credited President Trump’s law-and-order agenda for driving down violence to levels not seen since the turn of the 20th century.
“President Trump is getting dangerous criminals off the streets, deporting criminal illegal aliens, and is embracing our heroic law enforcement officers like never before. Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies hurt the American people for years. President Trump is undoing that damage,” the White House said in a statement to The Washington Times this month.
That came after New York City and Baltimore touted drastic declines in killings at the midway point of 2026.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said the 50 homicides recorded through July 1 were the fewest ever documented by the city in the first six months of a year.
In the Big Apple, New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the 122 homicides tallied between January and June fell below the city’s previous record low of 136 logged in 2017.
“New York City’s public safety progress is the result of precision policing and the extraordinary work of the men and women of the NYPD,” Commissioner Tisch said in a statement. “They are going after the guns, taking down violent gangs, building the cases, making the arrests, and working foot posts that help keep neighborhoods safe.”
Some cities did not witness the sharp drop in homicides that most others did.
The council’s report said Norfolk, Virginia, saw a 64% surge in killings compared with the first half of 2025 and 36% more than the same stretch in 2019. Norfolk Police Chief Mark Talbot put the spike in perspective by saying the city had its lowest murder rate in 40 years in 2025.
San Francisco experienced a 55% increase through the year’s first six months compared with last year, the report said, although the city’s own data shows that percentage jumped 46% — from 11 slayings in 2025 to 16 this year.
And the Council on Criminal Justice said Dallas endured a 30% rise in killings to start 2026 in contrast with 2025. However, both San Francisco and Dallas saw 10% and 22% declines in slayings, respectively, when weighing this year’s homicide numbers against 2019’s.
The report did note that Texas’ capital, Austin, documented a 9% increase in killings since 2025 and a 74% increase in slayings since 2019.
Even with the outliers, Mr. Gelb said the nation is on track for an even safer future.
His organization plans to host a summit in September to discuss potential causes behind the country’s falling homicide numbers.
