New data published by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) found that the rate of reported homicides was 21% lower in 2025 than in 2024. An expert told Audacy this week that the drop indicates we’re returning to pre-pandemic crime levels.
“One thing that I see looking at the data is that this reduction in crime is in many ways sort of a return to normal,” Emily Owens, professor and chair of the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at UC Irvine, told KCBS Radio in the Bay Area. “I think that during the pandemic, when the world turned upside down, we saw big spikes in homicide and in assault. There was also a lot of stress placed on police departments.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in 2020, it came with temporary (and in some cases, permanent) business closures as well as stay-at-home orders and other disease mitigation efforts. It also came with that crime spike that Owens mentioned.
“Assessing trends over a longer period, violent crime overall in 2025 was at or below levels in 2019, the year prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests of 2020,” said the CCJ. “There were 25% fewer homicides in the study cities in 2025 than in 2019.”
To study crime trends in the U.S., the CCJ examined yearly and monthly rates of 13 violent, property, and drug offenses reported to police in 40 large American cities. Data for homicides was reported from 35 of the cities. Overall, 922 fewer homicides were reported last year compared to 2024. Lethality, or the share of serious violent crime that is fatal, also declined 8% in a sample of 18 cities from 2024 to 2025.
“Cities with the highest pre-pandemic homicide levels experienced the largest drop in lethality from 2019 to 2025 (-36%),” the CCJ said.
Rates for other violent crimes dropped last year as well. There were 9% fewer reported aggravated assaults, 22% fewer gun assaults, 2% fewer domestic violence incidents and 23% fewer robberies, including and 43% fewer carjackings. These rates were also lower than they were back in 2019, before the pandemic. Aggravated assault was down 6%, gun assault was down 13%, sexual assault was down 4%, domestic violence was down 19%, robbery was down 36% and carjacking was down 29%.
“The story that the numbers that the CCJ have compiled is telling me is that whatever is driving this crime decline is happening almost everywhere,” Owens said of the reason behind the drop. “This appears to be a structural thing. Trying to credit any one particular thing that one particular city has been doing is going to be very hard to do in a credible way.”
However, Owens noted that the numbers do continue a trend of falling crime dating back to the 1990s that seems to have been briefly interrupted by the pandemic. According to the CCJ, the overall declines in crime, particularly the decline in homicides, are a promising sign for the future and are “likely the result of a complex tangle of broad social and technological changes and direct policy interventions.”
Going forward, Owens said that law enforcement agencies are still facing some of the challenges that put pressure on them during the pandemic. Staffing concerns are a main concern.
“I think that this is... something we’re slowly starting to figure out how to get back to normal,” she said.