Council on Criminal Justice

The findings largely align with other recent estimates.

The nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which analyzed crime trends in 40 large US cities, found that 11 of 13 offenses it tracked, included homicide, declined in 2025.

The sharp drop in homicides has persisted in 2026.

Yay.

Violent crime in general is also down.

The Council on Criminal Justice did a comparison between 2026 so far and 2019.

It shows that the homicide rate, which is slightly different but tracks with the murder rate, is down 31%, and robbery 41%.

Carjackings are also down by half, and sexual, gun, and aggravated assaults have all dropped.

But what's less clear is why the Great Decline is happening at all.

Maybe we're all too busy watching true crime documentaries to actually commit crimes, but unfortunately, there are no easy answers.

The president of the Council on Criminal Justice says the reasons are, quote, "about as clear as a glass of milk." Crime rates, he says, are falling in cities with different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leaders.

To make the glass of milk even thicker, violent crime is also falling in other places like Canada, London, and Argentina.

early.

There was an organization called the Council on Criminal Justice, which issued a report documenting the drop in crime.

The administration has cited them.

And so has some members of Congress.

Why is this happening across every single city? Whether it's Baltimore on the East Coast or something else on the West Coast, we're seeing murder rates fall dramatically.

And Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, stressed that it's not just a one-size-fits-all approach.

He said, "Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and p- political leadership, and the consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up." Finally, the newest Spider-Man, Brand New Day, just made box office history, becoming only the eighth film ever to reach $2 billion in global ticket sales.

Even more remarkable, it reached the milestone in just three weekends in theaters, the second-fastest film to reach 2 billion.

What's different about Memphis? Well, it could be that the federal government is sending the Memphis Safe Task Force, although we're not really seeing a lot of credit being given to the Memphis Safe Task Force, at least not directly.

The Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicide rates fell 18% during the first half of 2026 across 30 large U.S. cities compared with the same period last year.

The report did not include Memphis.

It found that 21 of the 30 cities recorded declines.