Superfact 8 : US Violent Crime Nearly Cut in Half Since 1990
Despite all the news reports about rampant crime, the US violent crime rate has fallen to half of what it was in the early 1990’s.
I’ve known for a while that violent crime in the US has been going down substantially since 1990. However, quite often when I mention this people refuse to believe it. When I visit NextDoor, the hyperlocal social networking service for neighborhoods, I see people complaining about rising crime, and especially rising violent crime. The news media and the newspapers are filled with violent crime stories, murders, mass shootings, assaults, rape, and robberies. It seems to be getting worse and worse. We are living in scary times, aren’t we?
The Better Angels of our Nature
A couple of years ago I bought a book by Steven Pinker with the title The Better Angels of our Nature, why violence has declined, which contradicted the violence is getting worse narrative. In the book he claims that violence is trending down worldwide and that includes US violent crime.
In 1987 I received a Christmas present from the parents of a fellow student whom I had been tutoring. I was an exchange student to the United States from Sweden at the time. The Christmas present in question was the World Almanac of 1987. I loved it and ever since I’ve bought the World Almanac every year. If you open the pages for crime statistics in the United States in the World Almanac you see the same thing, violent crime in the US is declining.
Statistics
Below is what the World Almanac 2023 says about the violent crime rate per 100,000 residents in the United States (page 114). The data sources were : Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Crime in the United States 2020. I also included property crimes in the last column to show that non-violent crimes have declined as well.
| Year | All violent crime | Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter | Rape | Robbery | Aggravated assault | All property crime (non-violent) |
| 1990 | 729.6 | 9.4 | 41.1 | 256.3 | 422.9 | 5,073.1 |
| 1995 | 684.5 | 8.2 | 37.1 | 220.9 | 418.3 | 4,590.5 |
| 2000 | 506.5 | 5.5 | 32.0 | 145.0 | 324.0 | 3,618.3 |
| 2005 | 469.0 | 5.6 | 31.8 | 140.8 | 290.8 | 3,431.5 |
| 2008 | 458.6 | 5.4 | 29.8 | 145.9 | 277.5 | 3,214.6 |
| 2011 | 387.1 | 4.7 | 27.0 | 113.9 | 241.5 | 2,905.4 |
| 2014 | 361.6 | 4.4 | 26.6 | 101.3 | 229.2 | 2,574.1 |
| 2016 | 386.6 | 5.4 | 30.0 | 102.9 | 248.3 | 2,451.6 |
| 2017 | 383.8 | 5.3 | 30.7 | 98.6 | 249.2 | 2,362.9 |
| 2018 | 370.4 | 5.0 | 31.0 | 86.1 | 248.2 | 2,209.8 |
| 2019 | 368.6 | 5.1 | 31.4 | 81.8 | 250.4 | 2,130.6 |
| 2020 | 387.8 | 6.5 | 27.6 | 73.9 | 279.7 | 1,958.2 |
The graph below is taken from this article from the Pew Research Center tells the same story. The graph. It shows that the US violent crime rate has nearly halved since the 1990’s. There is a slight uptick in crime for the years 2020 and 2021 but according to this PBS article the downward trend has continued in 2022 and 2023.
Since this is a surprising fact that some does not even want to acknowledge (in my experience) I consider this a super fact.
Do you feel it is hard to believe that violent crime in the US has been declining over the last few decades?
Newstrade