Crime keeps falling in 2026

Murder fell another 23% in the first six months of 2026, compared with the same months of 2025. FBI Director Kash Patel published that preliminary figure in August, in his message opening the bureau's annual crime report. Violent crime fell 10.6%, robbery 19.6% and rape 18.6%.

Baseball fans learn early not to trust April. A hitter batting .400 in the first month usually cools off; the number that matters is where he stands at the All-Star break. In crime terms, 2025 was the hot April. The FBI's murder rate fell 18.5% that year, the largest one-year drop in its national estimates. After a run like that, a bounce back would have surprised nobody.

The first half of 2026 is the All-Star break, and there is no slump.

Three scorekeepers, one direction

The FBI is not the only one keeping score. The nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice tracked 30 large cities and found homicides down 18% in the first half of 2026, which means 215 fewer people killed. Carjackings fell 47% and car thefts 20%. The Major Cities Chiefs Association, counting 66 big-city police departments, found homicides down 17.2%, from 2,611 to 2,162.

Two cities where President Trump sent federal help did far better than average. In the chiefs' count, homicides fell 43.9% in Washington, D.C., and 43.7% in Memphis, both home to federal task forces. That is more than double the 17.2% overall drop.

These are early numbers, and early FBI numbers have run rosy before: in 2024, crime analyst Jeff Asher estimated the bureau's quarterly figures overstated declines by about 5 percentage points. Not everything is falling, either. Aggravated assault barely moved in the council's cities, domestic violence rose 8%, and Chicago's homicides were up 6% in the chiefs' count.

Grant all of it. Take 5 points off the FBI's 23% and you land at 18%, right where the two independent counts already sit. Three scorekeepers using three different methods agree that murder is falling fast for a second straight year, and the council expects 2026 to set a new record low. Adam Gelb, who leads the council, put it simply: “Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map.”

A hot April proves nothing. Still hitting at the break is how pennant races are won. Preliminary numbers get revised once every department reports a full year, so when the full-year figures arrive, check them yourself at counciloncj.org and in the FBI's Crime Data Explorer, and see whether the streak held.