Why Are Homicides Declining Across the United States?

Over the past three years, cities across the United States have experienced a historic drop in homicides.¹ No single cause explains the improvement but, in interviews with The Pew Charitable Trusts, experts offered several potential explanations—from greater federal funding for cities to more focused law enforcement to community-led interventions.

Nationwide, in 2025, homicides were down by about 18% compared with 2024, marking the largest one-year decrease on record. The change puts the country’s homicide rate at approximately 4.2 per 100,000 people, the lowest documented by the FBI going back to 1960, when national estimates were largely standardized (though data comparability in the earliest years carries some uncertainty).

Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst whose Crime Index is widely used by policymakers and researchers to track shifts in violence, explained that last year’s homicide reduction is part of a three-year trend following a historic spike. In 2020, homicides jumped by 29%, the largest one-year increase ever recorded. Factors such as COVID-19-related unemployment and school closures, a “pullback” of law enforcement in response to protests of police violence, and surging gun sales may have contributed to the change. But since 2023, homicides have been on a sustained decline, and Asher believes the decrease represents more than a simple reversion to the pre-pandemic status quo.

“The bottom line is that we can’t say when murder was lower than it is right now, which is a pretty remarkable achievement,” Asher said.

Federal investments supported public safety functions

Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), the federal government directed roughly $350 billion to states and localities through its State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds. As ARPA money came in, governments backfilled more than 1 million jobs cut during the pandemic.

Analysis of the jobs local governments restored shows that it was overwhelmingly positions such as police officers, teachers, counselors, clinicians, social workers, behavioral health specialists, and grant administrators for local organizations.² These roles deliver a wide array of violence prevention services, especially to people at high risk of violent victimization and offending, explained John Roman, director of the Center on Public Safety & Justice at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. And as those jobs came back online, violence fell.

There’s an “amazing correlation,” Roman said, “where, as the number of local government employees ticks up, crime—particularly gun violence and homicide—declines proportionately.”

Shani Buggs, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Davis, said that large-scale federal support allowed cities to undertake a “whole-of-government” approach. Cities created dedicated violence prevention offices to coordinate between mayors’ offices, police, schools, hospitals, and community groups.

Many also invested in what Buggs described as “sectors of social life that matter in terms of creating a healthy and stable environment that then lowers the likelihood of violence occurring.” Baltimore, for example, used ARPA funding not only to pay for community violence intervention programs but also to fund construction of vital neighborhood spaces such as pools, libraries, and community centers. A combination of all these efforts, experts said, likely contributed to the city’s large homicide declines over the last three years, including a 31% plunge in 2025.

Police increased focus on homicide

Another factor that appeared to drive the decline is more focused policing. Faced with a staffing crisis that intensified during the pandemic, police departments throughout the U.S. directed resources toward the people and places with the highest rates of violence, said Charles Fain Lehman, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who studies crime policy. Many departments used “focused deterrence,” a strategy in which they identify high-risk groups and individuals and inform them about strict legal consequences for future violence. This effort is coupled with an offer of support and resources from community leaders and service providers. Research has shown that this partnership approach reduces crime.

“You’re seeing the same focus on violent offenders across the board, in most departments that you talk to,” Lehman said. “They’ve gotten the message that this is what you do to reduce violence.” For example, Philadelphia’s Group Violence Intervention, a focused deterrence approach, reduced shootings per week by around 39% among engaged groups between 2020, when the strategy was implemented, and 2022.

Adding to this shift is a concentration among police departments on solving more homicides. Nationally, only around half of all homicides are solved. Experts agreed that increasing clearance rates—the percentage of reported homicides that lead to an arrest—likely would help deter violent crime. ³

“Today, more police agencies are actually focused on clearance as a critical performance measure, and that’s helping,” Roman said. He noted that many departments have beefed up support for investigations, DNA databases, and crime-solving technology, such as license-plate readers. In part because of this increased support, clearance rates nationwide have ticked up in recent years. When the likelihood that a perpetrator is held accountable increases, it can reinforce trends toward less violence.

Community-led work is also helping

A range of community violence interventions have likely complemented the work of law enforcement, experts say. Beginning in 2021, cities increasingly used ARPA funding to invest in a variety of community-based initiatives, such as engaging high-risk individuals through credible messengers to de-escalate conflict. The effectiveness of such programs is promising, though mixed. In some cities, including Atlanta and Indianapolis, violence plummeted at record rates. A number of cities also used federal or foundation funding to launch or expand hospital-based violence intervention programs, which support victims of gun violence immediately after an injury and have been shown to reduce reinjury and violent offending.

What these approaches all have in common, Buggs said, is that they help people navigate conflict and access services that can lead them to greater life stability and, in turn, improve community safety.

More research needed

Over the past year, funding from ARPA and the COVID-19 era’s large federal investments in community violence interventions have been scaled back. Despite these cuts, the positive trend is so far continuing in 2026: Several cities have reported some of their lowest homicide rates ever through the first quarter of the year, with Philadelphia showing a 38% decline from the same period in 2025; New York City a 27% decline; and Washington, D.C., a 44% decline. Nonetheless, all the experts Pew spoke to said they cannot yet pinpoint exactly which approaches are working where, and they agree on the need for more rigorous empirical analysis as well as continued investments in violence interventions.

In particular, experts said that state and local governments should take measures to double-down on their historic violence reductions. Police staffing remains persistently lower than pre-pandemic levels. Given the empirical association between higher levels of police and lower levels of violent crime, Lehman suggests devoting more federal spending to police hiring and retention. “My long-run concern is, basically, do we continue to demand that the system does more with less?” he said. “Will that eventually get out of our control?”

Buggs advocates for community-based intervention funding to be restored. In addition to that support, she said the country would benefit from research that draws on the perspectives of people on the front lines of violence reduction efforts.

“Until we invest meaningfully in people and places, it’s hard to see that we will maintain the success that we have gained,” Buggs said. “Research and practice can help illuminate how we can continue to build peace and help families be safer, more stable, and more secure.”

Endnotes

1. The term “criminal homicide,” as defined by the FBI, refers to the willful killing of one person by another, including both intentional murder and non-negligent manslaughter. For the purposes of this article, Pew uses the broad term “homicide,” except in cases where murder is specifically indicated by the data.
2. The U.S. Census Bureau’s “Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll Summary” reports for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 show a steady increase in local government jobs overall and across the categories leading up to 2025.
3. The FBI definition for cleared cases includes both arrests and “exceptional clearances,” instances where police have identified a suspect but are unable to make an arrest (for example, if the suspect has died).

Meaghan McDonald is a senior officer working on reducing community violence for The Pew Charitable Trusts’ safety and justice portfolio and Michael Friedrich is a freelance journalist who writes about public policy.