![[OC] How have crime rates in the US changed over the last 50 years?](https://www.byteseu.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/chhy6p3uhveg1-1229x1536.png "[OC] How have crime rates in the US changed over the last 50 years?")
I lead communications at Our World in Data. The data here is from the US FBI. I made this chart using our Grapher tool and Figma. This is from a new article we published this week, so check that out if you're interested to learn more. Below is a bit about the article:
Crime is clearly a concern for many people. Nearly 60% of Americans, for example, say that reducing crime should be a top priority for the US president and Congress.
How have crime rates in the US changed over the last 50 years?
After a peak in the 1990s, the overall trend in both violent and property crimes has been downward. Americans in that decade were at least twice as likely to be victims of crime as they are today.
But this is not necessarily how the American public perceives it.
The polling agency Gallup has conducted numerous surveys asking Americans how they perceive changes in crime rates since 1993. In 23 out of the 27 annual surveys, the majority said that they believed crime rates had actually increased from the previous year.
In a new article, Hannah Ritchie and Fiona Spooner look at the data and discuss the gap between the reality and people’s (mis)perception: https://ourworldindata.org/us-crime-rates
Posted by cgiattino
17 Comments
I’d be curious how much of that bump in homicides were domestic incidents during the pandemic.
Wild how the 90s felt like peak chaos, but the data shows weve actually gotten way safer since then.
You can really see the impact of covid and lead poisioning here.
Yeah, war on drugs and austerity measures passed by the Reagan administration really did some wonders in the crime statistics.
It’s funny how so many people romanticize the past but in reality it’s much better today than it was say back in the 60s and 70s. Crime is lower, poverty rate is lower and people have more rights.
I find that bump in homicides in the US so strange. Everyone at the time (and in retrospect) were like, of course there’s a jump in murders, the pandemic drove people crazy. I remember an interview with the mayor of (I think) Chicago who was like ‘it’s completely inevitable’.
And yet this didn’t happen in other countries – basically all crime dropped, including homicide.
Now do scams, telefraud, email fraud, romance scams, pig butchering etc
Removing lead from gasoline was a good idea. Fuck Thomas midgeley Jr. Right in his eye.
Abortion access helped a little too
The little coda about asking stupid people their uneducated opinion is a little weird. We asked people whether the earth is flat and they said it was at a higher rate than they used to. Qed the earth is flattening
No the fuck it isn’t
The facts are right there. News is all rapes and murders. Always has been. If you’re an idiot, you’ll think that’s all that happens instead of understanding things in the news are by their nature noteworthy. Nobody writes an article saying “nobody got murdered today”. Sampling bias
Mainstream media, gun companies, chuds, etc benefit from the dumbest people alive thinking they are in danger from minorities so they’ll vote to remove their rights so the news lies about crime going up
But here are the data
Is there any reasonable explanation for that 90 spike?
The common logic was the leaded fuel for the 60s and 70s… but the 90s was already having a decreasing trend but it went up again, strangely.
It’s Gen-x.
We were a bunch of assholes, raised by parents who paid no attention to us and had no idea what we were doing. As we aged out of our prime crime committing years, the crime rate dropped and dropped.
Homisides i rampint in the 90s doo to gang violince
Now do pedestrian deaths
Upward trajectory
Jesus – the 90’s – WHAT A DECADE TO BE ALIVE!
Now do political meme coin shilling as a graph.
So the executive branch’s policy;s in the 80s and first few years coincide with a rise in crime. Then a couple of years into the 90s the opposite occurred. Coincidence?
So we take the policy}it’s of the past few years that caused the dollar to fall by over q0% compared to foreign currency and the inflationary tariffs, people are becoming more desperate which means more of them will turn towards crime, more violent crime.
I asked ChatGpt 5 to compared economic indicators between the two US political parties since WW2. I honestly thought it would be balanced but it wasn’t. Democrats had a superior metrics by almost every indicator. I think one taxes and spends and the other cars taxes and spends. It obvious what behavior is responsible, You don’t cut your income and spend more on expenses but increasing income and spending makes more more financial sense.
My MAGA father rails about crime rates in NYC. He doesn’t live in NYC, but nearby. I’m always hearing how dangerous it supposedly is and how it is “much worse than ever before.”
He used to take me to the city in the 80s. I thought it was a bit scary at times, but a child’s brain is kind of weird. Could be just what he was telling me or what I saw on TV.
The thing is – crime rates in the city for felonies and misdemeanors are down about 20% or more while the population has increased by 10%. However, try showing him this information and he just goes off on a terrorist being the mayor of NYC.
The way I see it, crimes rates are down nationally and this tracks to most places regionally as well. And we don’t see a correlation between “left” policies producing more crime while “right” policies reduce it. It seems pretty much the same. So, maybe we can do better and treat people like human beings since harsh treatment hasn’t moved the needle.
If you start decriminalizing / reclassifying crimes as misdemeanors, this will indeed be the outcome.
I love how framing of data works.