Trends in Violent Crime and Accountability

50-state violent crime data

The national violent crime rate was 14 percent lower in 2025 than in 2019. In 2025, rates of aggravated assault, homicide, rape, and robbery were lower than in 2019.

Trends in violent crime also varied by state. Between 2019 and 2025, violent crime rates decreased in 44 states and the District of Columbia and increased in 6 states.

Between 2019 and 2025, the percentage of violent crimes solved by law enforcement increased in 36 states and the District of Columbia and decreased in 13 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 2025, 328 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents were reported to police in the United States.

Trends in solved violent crime

In 2025, 48 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 2021 and rose each year from 2022 to 2025, reaching its highest level since at least 2015.

Violent crime and solved violent crime by state, 2025

The following tables include violent crime rates and solve rates by state and offense. For more information on violent crime solve rates for each offense by state, visit state-specific pages here.

Orange indicates a solve rate less than the U.S. rate.

Blue indicates a solve rate greater than or equal to the U.S. rate.

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.

Trends in law enforcement resources

State and local expenditures include spending on police, sheriffs, and highway patrols. The charts below also include staffing per 10,000 residents and per 1,000 violent crimes. These factors may show the level of policing a community receives, potentially influencing both crime and solve rates and providing insight into how law enforcement resources impact violent crime.

Overall, state and local spending on law enforcement across the United States increased by 25 percent from 2014 to 2024, adjusting for inflation.

The number of officers per 10,000 residents in jurisdictions across the United States has increased by 5 percent from 2015 to 2025.

The number of officers per 1,000 violent crimes in jurisdictions across the United States has increased by 23 percent from 2015 to 2025.

Homicide solve rates by victim and incident characteristics

The following charts include homicide solve rates by race and ethnicity, gender, age, weapon type, and number of victims. For more information, see the data and methodology sections below.

In the United States, homicide solve rates are highest when the victim is White and are lowest when the victim is Black. Homicide solve rates are highest when the victim is a woman and lowest when the victim is a man. Homicide solve rates are higher for victims 35 years and older.

Data sources and methodology

Data on crime and solve rates come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Counts of reported violent crime from 2015 through 2025 come from the Summary Reporting System (SRS) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The FBI estimates reported crime for each state from agency-level reports, accounting for agencies that did not report, and publishes these estimates on its Crime Data Explorer.

State solve rates are calculated by dividing crimes cleared by crimes reported among agencies that reported to the FBI. Solved crimes are estimated by multiplying each state’s solve rate by the FBI’s estimate of its reported crimes. The U.S. solve rate divides the total of these estimated solved crimes across states by the total of estimated reported crimes. Each offense has its own solve rate, so solved counts by offense may not add up to the violent crime total.

The FBI stopped collecting SRS data after 2020 and required agencies to report through NIBRS. Fewer agencies reported as a result, so 2021 estimates are less reliable. Agencies covering 77 percent of the U.S. population reported in 2021. State pages show 2021 solve rates only where reporting agencies covered at least 70 percent of the state’s population. Starting with 2022 data, the FBI again accepted SRS reports from agencies that could not submit NIBRS data. In 2025, agencies reporting through NIBRS or SRS covered 96.2 percent of the U.S. population, and agencies reporting through NIBRS covered 89.5 percent, according to the FBI’s Reported Crimes in the Nation, 2025. Agencies that reported at least one month of data in 2025 covered less than 90 percent of the population in Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, so conclusions about crime trends in those states should be interpreted with additional caution.

Crime rates are calculated by dividing estimated reported crimes by the total population. Population data come from the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program.

Solve rates are the number of reported crimes cleared by arrest or by exceptional means divided by the number of reported crimes. A crime is cleared by exceptional means when an agency cannot arrest or charge the person who committed it but has done all of the following:

Identified the person who committed the crime
Gathered enough evidence to support an arrest, make a charge, and turn the person over 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 agency’s control that prevents it from arresting, charging, and prosecuting the person

Examples include the death of the person who committed the crime, a victim who refuses to cooperate with prosecution, and a denied extradition. Agencies can also clear cases reported in earlier years, so a year’s solve rate can exceed 100 percent.

U.S. solve rates leave out Illinois, which did not report reliable clearance data. In 2022, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) reported crimes to the FBI but no clearances. For that year, New York’s solve rates for all violent crime, aggravated assault, and robbery use the average of the NYPD’s four quarterly clearance reports. In 2019 and 2020, those reports matched the NYPD’s FBI clearance rates within half a percentage point for aggravated assault and robbery but not for homicide and rape. New York’s 2022 homicide and rape solve rates are therefore omitted, and New York is left out of the 2022 U.S. homicide and rape solve rates.

Data on law enforcement expenditures come from the U.S. Census Bureau Annual Survey of State and Local Government Finances. Expenditures include police protection spending by state governments and all local governments in each state, such as counties and municipalities. Expenditures are in dollars of the most recent year, adjusted with the Chained Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U), following the Census Bureau’s guidance.

Officer counts include sworn officers in state and local law enforcement agencies as of October 31 of each year, from the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer law enforcement employee data. Officers per capita uses the population served by agencies that reported employee counts. Officers per violent crime divides that rate by the national violent crime rate from the FBI’s state estimates.

Data on homicide solve rates and case characteristics come from the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR). The analysis includes murder and nonnegligent manslaughter and excludes manslaughter by negligence. SHR data do not record clearances, so a homicide counts as solved when the offender’s age, sex, and race are known. Solve rates combine data from 2022 through 2025 for more stable estimates.