Summation
This article is available as a YouTube podcast.
A summation of homicide data from federal sources and the Journal Of The American Medical Association.
The problem, however, is the accuracy and context of thousands of true crime stories when it comes to murders. Maybe it’s time to set the record straight as to what happens with homicides and a more accurate account as to who is victimized.
Author
Crime in America.Net-“Trusted Crime Data, Made Clear.”
Quoted by The Associated Press, USA Today, A&E Television, the nationally syndicated Armstrong Williams Television Show (30 times), Department of Justice documents, US Supreme Court briefs, C-SPAN, the National Institute of Health, college and university online libraries, multiple books and journal articles, The Huffington Post, JAMA, The National Institute of Corrections, The Office of Juvenile Justice And Delinquency Prevention, The Bureau of Justice Assistance, Gartner Consulting, The Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, The Marshall Project, The Heritage Foundation via Congressional testimony, Law Enforcement Today, Law Officer.Com, Blue Magazine, Corections.Com, Prison Legal News, The Hill (newspaper of Congress), the Journal of Offender Monitoring, Inside Edition Television, Yomiuri Shimbun (Asia’s largest newspaper), LeFigaro (France’s oldest newspaper), Oxygen and allied publications, Forbes, Newsweek, The Economist, The Toronto Sun, Homeland Security Digital Library, The ABA Journal, The Daily Express (UK) The Harvard Political Review, The Millennial Source, The Federalist Society, Lifewire, The Beccaria Portal On Crime (Europe), The European Journal of Criminology, American Focus and many additional publications.
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A comprehensive overview of crime for recent years is available at Violent and Property Crime Rates In The U.S.
Article
We live in a world of endless homicide and murder themed television shows, novels, and podcasts. There is nothing in my decades in the justice system that compares to our nation’s obsession with homicides.
The problem, however, is the accuracy and context of thousands of true crime stories when it comes to murders. Maybe it’s time to set the record straight as to what happens with homicides and a more accurate account as to who is victimized.
Homicides in cities increased by 50 percent, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association between 2019 and 2023. Homicides decreased in 2024 and 2025 per FBI data and independent analysts.
What’s below is from Homicide Victimization in the United States, 2023, released in May of 2025 from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice using data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR).
Even though it’s a recent publication, 2023 is the latest full (official) national crime report from the FBI. The latest National Crime Victimization Survey report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics is also 2023 data. Traditionally, full and official reports from the US Department of Justice are released with older data, with the next full report scheduled for release in the late summer or fall of 2025, covering the calendar year 2024.
The FBI was contemplating releasing monthly and quarterly data, but that hasn’t happened.
The latest data from the FBI offers preliminary numbers for the first six months of 2024. An email from the FBI indicated that there would not be further preliminary releases for 2024.
Full Reports Versus Preliminary Reports
I discussed this at length in previous articles; readers need to be skeptical of preliminary reports for a variety of reasons. Preliminary reports from the FBI and private analysts have been wrong.
Yes, preliminary data is helpful for current trends, as long as readers understand that what they read could and probably will change, the same with many categories of federal data.
FBI and private analyst reports depend on crimes reported to law enforcement, and the overwhelming majority of crimes are not reported or recorded. Homicides are the violent crime exception.
So use of the 2023 data below gives users some comfort that the data presented has been analyzed, updated, and is accurate.
Notes
See the appendix of this article for explanations of the terms “cleared” (i.e., crimes solved and categories of crimes solved) and measures of Hispanic origin.
Summation Of The Bureau Of Justice Statistics Report Using FBI Data (mostly direct quotes)
In 2023, there were an estimated 19,800 homicide victimizations in the United States, a rate of 5.9 homicides per 100,000 persons.
This was lower than the estimated 22,240 victimizations (6.7 per 100,000) in 2022 but higher than the 16,670 victimizations (5.0 per 100,000) in 2019 (before COVID).
Homicide refers to the offenses of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter and is defined as “the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another.”
The male homicide victimization rate (9.3 per 100,000 persons) was 3.5 times greater than the homicide victimization rate for females (2.6 per 100,000).
The homicide victimization rate for black persons (21.3 per 100,000 persons) was more than 6 times the rate for white persons (3.2 per 100,000).
The largest percentage of homicide victimizations (39%) was committed by someone outside the family, but known to the victim.
Strangers committed 19.2 percent of all homicides, while unknowns committed 28.4 percent, for a total of 47.6 percent for all categories.
The unknown category is above or close to 40 percent for the younger age categories.
Females (0.9 per 100,000 persons) experienced a higher rate of intimate partner homicide than males (0.5 per 100,000).
Most homicide incidents (93%) involved one victim.
The percentage of homicide victimizations involving a firearm was 80%, compared to 68% in 2014.
Since 2021, the percentage of firearm-involved homicides has remained stable at around 80%.
About half of homicide victimizations were cleared by arrest (47%), which was not statistically different from the percentage that were not cleared (48%).
Compared to the homicide victimization rate for white persons (3.2 per 100,000) in 2023, the homicide rate was higher for black persons (21.3 per 100,000) and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander persons (6.5 per 100,000), while the rate for Asians (1.4 per 100,000) was lower.
Overall, the homicide victimization rate experienced by black persons was higher than the rate for victims in each of the other race categories.
The highest homicide rate by age group in 2023 was experienced by persons ages 18 to 24 at 12.9 per 100,000 persons. This rate was greater than the homicide rates experienced by each of the other age groups.
Among homicides of males, 42% were perpetrated by someone outside the family but known to the victim.
Among homicides of females, 36% were committed by an intimate partner (i.e., current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend).
Overall, homicides of females were more likely than homicides of males to be perpetrated by a family member (a current or former intimate partner or other family member).
Perpetrators of homicides against males were more likely than perpetrators of homicides against females to be non-family (outside of family but known to the victim, stranger, or unknown).
Homicide victimizations of white persons (16%) were more likely to be perpetrated by an intimate partner than those of black persons (9%).
White persons (41%) were also more likely than black (37%) or Asian (32%) persons to experience homicide victimization from someone outside the family but known to the victim.
Among victims age 11 or younger (76%) and age 65 or older (32%), the most common victim-offender relationship was the category other family member.
In 2023, 4 in 5 (80%) homicide victimizations involved the use of a firearm.
Knives, blunt instruments, personal weapons, and other non-personal weapons were each involved in fewer than 1 in 10 (10%) homicide victimizations.
In 2023, the percentage of homicide incidents cleared by arrest or exceptional means was 52%. This was lower than the percentage cleared in 2022 (53%).
In 2014, almost two-thirds (65%) of homicide incidents were cleared.
About 52% of homicide victimizations of white persons were cleared through arrest, while 42% were not cleared.
Homicide victimizations of black persons were less likely to be cleared through arrest (43%) and more likely to not be cleared (54%) compared to homicide victimizations of white persons.
Clearance of homicide victimizations was more common among persons age 11 or younger (53%) and age 65 or older (53%) than among age groups between 12 and 64.
Homicide victimizations of females (11%), Asian persons (13%), and those age 65 or older (10%) were more likely than victims in other sex, race, or age categories to be cleared by exceptional means (i.e., cleared because the offender died, the prosecution was declined, the victim refused to cooperate, extradition of the offender was denied by another jurisdiction, or the offender was a juvenile but no referral was made to the juvenile court as a matter of accepted law enforcement policy).
Chart
American Kids Have Become Increasingly Unhealthy Over Nearly Two Decades, New Study Finds
A new study reports that health problems for American children have increased, according to the Associated Press, based on the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Per the article, they focus on firearm-related homicides and young people. As we are aware from the article above, the vast majority of homicides are firearm or handgun-related.
However, the Associated Press article and other media accounts were vague on the issue of child-related homicides, so I asked ChatGPT to summarize and add context to the new research.
The difficulty with firearm-related statistics is that so many are suicides, where the focus of this report is homicides. Per the CDC, approximately 56 percent of firearm-related deaths in 2022 were suicides for all ages.
About 65% of U.S. child and teen firearm deaths are due to homicides, totaling roughly 2,800 deaths per year in recent years
For children under 15, the firearm homicide rate in the U.S. is nearly 16 times that of other comparable nations.
As a result, in the U.S., firearms have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among ages 1–19 since around 2020.
Appendix Homicide Clearances-Arrests
There are three ways incident clearance can be reported by law enforcement agencies: Cleared through arrest: includes any on-view arrest that occurs absent a warrant or previous incident report, arrests where an offender is taken into custody based on a warrant or previously submitted incident report, and incidents for which an offender is issued a summons to appear in court but not taken into police custody.
Exceptional clearance: occurs when an incident is cleared without an arrest due to circumstances outside of the control of law enforcement. To clear an offense by exceptional means, agencies must meet the following criteria: an investigation must have clearly established the identity of a least one offender; there must be sufficient probable cause to support the arrest, charging, and prosecution of the offender; law enforcement must know the exact location of the offender so that an arrest could be made had circumstances not prevented the arrest; and there must be a reason outside the control of law enforcement that prevents law enforcement from making an arrest and charging the offender.
Exceptional clearance includes: the death of the offender (e.g., suicide or justifiably killed by law enforcement or citizen) the prosecutor’s decision to decline prosecution of the case after it was referred from law enforcement, the victim’s refusal to cooperate with the prosecution after the offender had been identified, the denial of extradition because the offender had committed a crime in another jurisdiction and is being prosecuted for that offense, the offender was a juvenile and not taken into police custody.
An incident cannot be cleared by exceptional means if it was previously or concurrently reported as cleared by arrest. Not cleared: A crime incident that is not reported in NIBRS as cleared by an arrest or exceptional means is considered not cleared. Incidents that are administratively closed do not necessarily meet the criteria to be reported as cleared. NIBRS does not record information on administrative case closures.
Appendix-Hispanic Origin
A note on Hispanic origin. Because Hispanic origin is an optional field in NIBRS, it contains a high level of missing data. There are concerns that the missingness is not random because some agencies may do a more thorough job completing this field than other agencies. Therefore, to date, Hispanic origin has not been included in the estimation process. Research is underway to determine if imputation of Hispanic origin is possible, which would allow for estimation in future publications featuring NIBRS data. Data on Hispanic origin used in this report come from the BJS and FBI NIBRS Extract File Program, 2023, which can be accessed at https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ web/NACJD/studies/39270.
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