2026 murder rate set to be lowest ever recorded in the US: report

The murder rate in 2026 is set to be one of the lowest ever recorded, according to crime analyst Jeff Asher. He estimated that there will be 10,000 fewer murders in the US this year than in 2020, 2021, and 2022.

Asher said that to estimate total murders for the year, he used the crime data from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer's monthly data along with the Crime Index national sample to come to his conclusion. "We can combine them both to tell which does better in predicting the FBI’s estimates and use that to generate a forecasted crime count," Asher wrote.

He estimated that the murder rate in 2026 will come in at 3 to 3.8 murders per 100,000 US residents, based on the numbers that have been reported so far this year. The murder rate since 2010 up through 2024 has been around 4.9 to 5.1 murders per 100,000 residents.

"The 2026 murder rate forecast is even more astonishing when you look at the below graph of the US murder rate since 1960. The 2026 murder rate will not just be the lowest ever, it could be more than 20 percent lower than the previous lowest rate ever recorded by the FBI (4.4 per 100k in 2014)," Asher wrote.
 

The report comes after the Trump administration has conducted emphasized National Guard blitzes in various cities around the country in addition to record levels of deportation of illegal immigrants. The administration has targeted the "worst of the worst," or illegal immigrants who have a criminal record in the US during that process.

Earlier this year, the FBI also released a preliminary report that indicated that violent crime in the US decreased at a rate that has not been seen in nearly 90 years.