The U.S. crime rate declined greatly in 2023 when compared to 2022, continuing the trend of crime rates decreasing across the country since 2021.
New data released this week by the FBI, which was provided by more than 13,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, shows that the number of murders nationwide dropped 13% in 2023, while overall violent crime fell by 6% and property crime decreased by 4%. The FBI will release its final report on crime in October.
"It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded," Jeff Asher, a former CIA analyst who writes about crime statistics, told NBC News.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Tuesday that the Justice Department in May 2021 began a new initiative to combat violent crime, which rose during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Since then, our prosecutors, agents, and grant-making experts have worked in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives," Garland said.
The resumption of anti-crime initiatives by local governments and courts that had stopped during the pandemic might explain the drop in crime, experts say.
Asher said, "The tools that we ordinarily have used to interrupt these cycles of violence were gone in 2020 [and] 2021."
"After a terrible period of underfunding and understaffing caused by the pandemic, local governments have, by most measures, returned to pre-pandemic levels," wrote John Roman, a criminologist at the University of Chicago, NBC News reported.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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