Criminal Justice Think Tank Reports Homicides Down 16% Last Year

The number of homicides across the United States declined by 16% in 2024, continuing a recent downward trajectory, according to the latest crime trends report from the Council on Criminal Justice, an organization that defines itself as a nonpartisan think tank.

Homicides spiked during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and crime became a central focus of President Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign, Yahoo reports.

The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJO, gathers data from individual law enforcement agencies for its biannual crime trends reports, meaning the data is more recent than the FBI’s annual report. Both the think tank’s and the FBI’s reports, however, show a similar turnaround in violent crime.

In 2023, criminal homicide — which the FBI defines as murder or non-negligent manslaughter — was down by 11.6% from the previous year. It was the largest single-year decline in two decades, according to the FBI’s annual crime report published last year.

The CCJ report shows that the downward trend appears to be continuing, with homicides in 2024 dropping by 16% compared with 2023. That drop equates to 631 fewer homicides in the 29 cities that provided data for the category, according to the council’s report.