The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) on Wednesday released A semi-annual report on crime trends showed that murders in major American cities fell 18 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, effectively putting the country on track to hit its lowest annual murder rate in over a century.
The CCJ analyzed 13 crime categories in 336 cities that have regularly reported monthly crime data over the past nine years. Nine of these crimes declined in the first half of 2026, with carjackings seeing the largest decline at 47 percent. Homicides have fallen 51 percent since their peak in early 2022, and car thefts have fallen 73 percent since their peak in 2023. The report also found a 13 percent decrease in residential burglaries compared to the previous year and a 56 percent decrease compared to their peak in 2018.
However, not all categories have improved. Drug crimes increased by 12 percent compared to the first half of 2025 and domestic violence cases increased by 8 percent. Shoplifting remains the only crime still above pre-pandemic levels in 2019, up 5 percent.
About a third of the 36 sample cities saw an increase in homicides compared to the first half of 2025, including Norfolk, Virginia, which saw a 64 percent increase, and San Francisco, which saw a 55 percent increase.
The CCJ said this was the case not a single explanation for the overall declining trends and points to a number of possible influences, including changes in the criminal justice system, technological advances, and broader changes in society and culture. Commentators have suggested that this decline could also be due to changes in the way people go about their daily lives, with many preferring digital transactions to cash payments, reducing the likelihood of opportunistic thefts and street robberies.
With the end of the pandemic, where millions of people have suffered lost their livelihoodSince then, economic security has stabilized and this has inevitably reduced the financial desperation that often leads to survival-oriented violence. There has also been an influx of funding, with hundreds of billions of dollars in federal pandemic recovery funds being funneled into stabilization local city budgets have allowed more targeted efforts in identifying the youth population at highest risk Violence.
The organization has been tracking crime trends since the outbreak of the pandemic, which brought with it: historic increase in homicides before the subsequent decline began in the second half of 2022.
