Continued drop

New FBI statistics show continued drop in US crime in first six months of 2024

By Josh Campbell and Eric Bradner

Crime in the United States dropped throughout the first six months of 2024, according to preliminary figures released Monday by the FBI, continuing a trend in falling crime rates the bureau recently noted for 2023.

The new numbers show murders from January to June dropped 23% compared with the same period in 2023, while violent crime fell 10% and reported rapes decreased by 18%. Aggravated assaults during that period decreased 8% year over year, according to the data, while robberies fell 14% and reported property crime was down 13%.

Monday’s release is certain to be viewed closely by the campaigns of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, as crime has been a prominent political issue in the 2024 presidential election. Trump has made crime — specifically violent crimes committed by undocumented immigrants — a core focus of his campaign and frequently highlights specific attacks on Americans.

Signs at Trump’s event in Wisconsin on Saturday included pictures of non-citizens arrested for allegedly committing violent crimes. A pair of monitors flashed the slogan, “End the invasion of small town America.” Another in a rotating series of slides showed an image of migrants in a crowded classroom with the message: “Open Borders = Packed Classrooms.”

“Hundreds of people have been murdered because of her action at the border, and thousands more will follow in rapid succession. She should be impeached and prosecuted for her actions,” the former president said, referring to Harris.

Trump has also frequently made false claims, including saying over the weekend that criminal offenders who had entered the United States over decades, including during Trump’s term, all arrived while Harris and President Joe Biden were in office.

And Trump wrongly claimed that the statistics are specifically about people who are now living freely in the US; the figures actually include people who are currently in jails and prisons serving criminal sentences.

Harris, meanwhile, often invokes her own history as a prosecutor, pointing to her time as California attorney general and efforts to prosecute transnational criminal organizations.

She has contrasted that with Trump, who was convicted in New York in May on 34 counts of falsifying business records and faces criminal charges in Georgia and on the federal level stemming from his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In a trip to the US-Mexico border in Arizona last week, Harris also criticized Trump for his role in tanking a bipartisan border security bill on Capitol Hill earlier this year. And she pledged to do more to reduce illegal border crossings and “pursue more severe criminal charges against repeat violators.”

The preliminary figures in the FBI’s Quarterly Uniform Crime Report, which covers January through June, come with important limitations. For one, the bureau relies upon data voluntarily submitted by policing agencies.

The numbers released Monday were gathered from more than 14,800 of the just over 19,300 law enforcement agencies from across the country, according to the bureau. The new preliminary figures do not include data from Los Angeles and may only include partial figures from Chicago.

Crime analysts also say quarterly data is imprecise, as law enforcement agencies have the remainder of the year to audit and correct any reporting errors before final annual figures are published by the FBI.

Jeff Asher, criminal justice analyst and co-founder of consulting firm AH Datalytics, previously told CNN, “We have other data sources that point to the same trends, but the degree of those declines is probably being overstated due to the methodology being employed by the FBI.”

The latest preliminary snapshot of falling crime rates in 2024 comes a week after the FBI issued a more fulsome report outlining its finalized numbers for 2023, which showed a drop in crime last year across numerous categories.

The 2023 report, which included figures from every major city in the nation, showed a dramatic 12% drop in murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, as well as a 3% fall in violent crime.