Homicides are on track to hit their lowest point in recorded U.S. history amid an overall decline in crime nationwide, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s midyear report released Thursday.
The organization said the drop in homicides this year is already outpacing the reductions made in 2025, which, before the report, was expected to have the nation’s lowest homicide rate since at least 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, a subset of the 36 cities examined overall, representing 215 fewer homicides.”
The number of homicides in the first six months of this year is 31% lower than the number documented in the first half of 2019, a key point of reference before the COVID-19 pandemic and civil unrest in 2020 ignited a generational public safety crisis.
The report said every violent crime and most property crimes were lower from January through June than in the same period in 2019.
Among violent offenses, aggravated assaults fell 3%, domestic violence fell 7%, sexual assaults fell 13%, shootings fell 17%, robberies fell 41%, and carjackings fell 51%.
For nonviolent crimes, commercial burglaries fell by 1%, car thefts fell by 3%, drug offenses fell by 15%, larcenies fell by 21%, and in-home burglaries fell by 50%.
The only property crime above the 2019 level is shoplifting, which rose 5% in the first half of this year.
The encouraging news was met with little explanation as to why crime, especially homicides, had cratered after spiking from 2020 to 2022.
The Council on Criminal Justice acknowledged that various factors may have contributed to the crime decline, including changes in policing strategies and improvements in law enforcement technology, as well as broader societal shifts.
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 President and CEO Adam Gelb echoed that point 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 credits itself as one of those “macro-level forces” that have reined in disorder.
The Trump administration this month credited its law-and-order agenda for driving down violence to levels not seen since at least 1900.
“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.
The White House statement 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 New York City, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the 122 homicides tallied from January through 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 show the sharp drop in homicides that most others did.
The council’s report said Norfolk, Virginia, showed a 64% surge in homicides 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, noting that the city had its lowest homicide rate in 40 years in 2025.
San Francisco experienced a 55% increase in the year’s first six months compared with last year, the report said, although the city’s own data shows a 45% increase — from 11 homicides in 2025 to 16 this year.
The Council on Criminal Justice said Dallas endured a 30% rise in killings to start 2026, in contrast with 2025. However, San Francisco showed a 10% decline in homicides since 2019, while Dallas showed a 22% decline over the same period.
The report noted that Austin, the Texas capital, documented a 9% increase in homicides since 2025 and a 74% increase since 2019.
Even with the outliers, Mr. Gelb said, the nation is on track for an even safer future.
The Council on Criminal Justice plans to host a summit in September to discuss potential causes of the country’s declining homicide rates.
