Trends in Violent Crime and Accountability

50-state violent crime data

From 2019 to 2023, the national violent crime rate declined despite an increase in 2020. However, there were important variations in violent crime trends by offense. Nationally, rates of reported homicide and aggravated assault increased, while rates of rape and robbery declined.

Trends in violent crime also varied by state. Between 2019 and 2023, violent crime rates in 32 states decreased, while violent crime rates in 18 states and the District of Columbia increased.

Between 2019 and 2023, the percentage of violent crimes solved by law enforcement decreased in 32 states and the District of Columbia, while increasing in 18 states.

Illinois did not report enough data to the FBI on whether crimes were solved to make reliable estimates.

Trends in reported violent crime

In 2023, 374 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents were reported to police in the United States.

Trends in solved violent crime

In 2023, 41 percent of violent crime incidents reported to police in the United States were solved. The percentage of violent crimes that law enforcement solved fell from 2019 to 2022 and increased in 2023 to a level similar to 2020.

Violent crime and solved violent crime by state, 2023

Data regarding crime and solve rates come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Violent crime includes homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and rape. Crime rates are calculated by dividing the number of estimated incidents by the total population for a given geography. Solve rates are the number of reported crimes cleared by arrest or by exceptional means divided by the number of reported crimes. For more information, see the data sources and methodology section below.

Data sources and methodology

Data regarding crime and solve rates come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Counts of reported violent crime between 2013 and 2023 are derived from the Summary Reporting System (SRS) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The FBI generated national estimates for reported crime and clearances based on agency-level reports, and these estimates were published through 2023 in the FBI’s annual report, Crime in the U.S. and on the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer. For agency-level clearance data, we used Jacob Kaplan’s version of the Offenses Known and Clearances by Arrest dataset.

The FBI stopped SRS data collection after data year 2020 and required law enforcement agencies to use NIBRS to report crime statistics to the FBI. This change decreased the number of agencies that submitted their crime data and thus reduced the reliability of state estimates in 2021. In 2022 and 2023, the FBI allowed agencies who were unable to submit NIBRS data to submit SRS data again. Ninety-four percent of the U.S. population was covered in the 2023 crime data submissions to the FBI, with most states providing close to complete data. However, the population upon which the estimates were derived decreased by over 10 percent in three states: Florida, Mississippi, and Wyoming, so conclusions about crime changes in those states should be interpreted with additional caution.

Crime rates are calculated by dividing the number of estimated incidents by the total U.S. population. Population data come from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 1-year estimates (table B01003) and the 2020 Decennial Census Redistricting Data (table P1).

Solve rates are the number of reported crimes cleared by arrest or by exceptional means divided by the number of reported crimes. A reported crime incident is cleared by exceptional means if a law enforcement agency is unable to arrest or formally charge a person with a crime, but the agency has met the following conditions:

Identified the person who committed the crime
Gathered enough evidence to support an arrest, make a charge, and turn over the person to the court for prosecution
Identified the suspect’s exact location so that the person could be taken into custody immediately
Encountered a circumstance outside the control of law enforcement that prohibits the agency from arresting, charging, and prosecuting the person

Examples of exceptional clearances include the death of the person who committed the crime; the victim’s refusal to cooperate with the prosecution after the person who committed the crime has been identified; or the denial of extradition.