IdeaLog

Despite right-wing lies, crime is down

Posted on May 28, 2025

Trump and his allies rely on fear to advance their authoritarian agenda. A favorite tactic is to spread fear about crime, with the explicit or implicit message that they are talking about immigrants and other people of color. But it’s a lie.

Fearmongering about crime works because Americans are deluged with stories about crime, some true (the two young Israeli diplomats) but many false (“they’re eating the cats and dogs”). Because of both right-wing memes and the mainstream media’s fanaticism in covering crime stories, a majority of Americans believe, year after year, that there “is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago.”

In fact, the opposite is true; crime has been going down year after year and U.S. crime rates are now historically low. Modern crime statistics are accessible back to 1960. Crime rates for both violent crime (murder, rape robbery and assault) and property crime (burglary, theft, auto theft and arson) increased about 400 percent from the early 1960s until the early 1990s. Since then, crime rates have plummeted. Now, nationwide rates of violent crime are what they were in the late 1960s and nationwide rates of property crime are as low as the early 60s.

The media virtually never explains this. Open any newspaper and it’s filled with crime stories without the slightest hint of perspective. Crime is now only about one-fourth of what it was in 1990, which is not that long ago.

Now, let us focus on crime in Washington, D.C. because, at some point, Trump will probably claim that crime is so out-of-control in our capital city that he has to nationalize the city police or call in military reserves. If (or when) he says that, it will be a cold-blooded lie.

Like national crime rates, both violent and property crime rates in the District of Columbia are at their lowest levels since the 1960s.

So far in 2025, violent crime in D.C. is down 22 percent and property crime is down 4 percent compared to the same dates in 2024. And in 2024, violent crime in D.C. was down 35 percent and property crime was down 11 percent compared to 2023.

Crime is not down in every city, but it’s an overwhelming nationwide trend. You can look up your own city (if they’ve reported to the FBI) by going to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, click “Download Quarterly Table Data” and look at Table 4.

If you do this and find interesting information, please try to get it covered in your own newspapers, TV news stations, and other mainstream news sources. Otherwise, nobody will ever know the truth.