Murder totals in the nation dropped about 19 percent in the first half of 2024, estimates crime analyst Jeff Asher on Substack. Violent crime reports dropped 7 percent and property crime is down 10 percent over 2023, Asher says, based on data from more than 190 cities with available numbers through at least May. Asher notes that if there wee complete data from all 18,000+ agencies nationwide, estimates wouldn't be necessary. "In the absence of that data we are forced to guess as to the trends using the available imperfect data and our informed intuition about historical norms," he says. .
Asher's large sample covers around 60 million people. There are 38 states represented. A sample of this size should be reasonably predictive of the year-end trend. There are no data on violent and property crimes available for Los Angeles, and there may be slight undercounts from some places due to underreporting the most recent full month to state agencies. The property crime decline may be overstated given evidence that the decline in auto thefts is strongest in larger cities which are overrepresented here. Asher calls his conclusion "a strongly informed guess but it’s a guess that could plausibly be wrong (either because the sample doesn’t match the nation’s wider trend or because something happens over the next six months)." Murder and violent crime are down or even relative to 2023 in around 70 percent of the cities while property crime is down or even in around 75 percent of the cities. Murder is down a lot — historically so — while violent crime and property crime appear to be falling at healthy clips this year.