Live Crime Tracker Shows Major Crime Declines in First Half of 2024
John K. Roman
Kiegan Rice
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July 2024
Crime rates in major U.S. cities declined substantially in the first half of 2024, according to novel data from NORC at the University of Chicago's new Live Crime Tracker.
An analysis by NORC‘s Center on Public Safety & Justice reveals unprecedented declines across multiple crime categories in 49 mid-sized and large cities. Homicides, motor vehicle thefts, and burglaries each dropped by over 22 percent compared to the same period in 2023. Statistically significant decreases were also recorded in robbery and simple assault cases.
Typically, one-year changes in crime in the United States are small, as measured by national crime statistics maintained by the FBI through the Uniform Crime Report (UCR). Between 1960 and 2022, the average annual change in total crime, whether up or down, was 4.3 percent. The average year-to-year change in violent crime (4.5 percent) and property crime (4.4 percent) is similar.
Compared with this historical standard, crime since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely volatile. From 2019 to 2020, homicide increased by 28 percent, the largest one-year increase since 1960. In 2023, preliminary FBI UCR data show a 13.2 percent decline in homicides, which is the largest one-year decline since 1960. (The second largest one-year decline in homicides was a 10.8 percent drop between 1995 and 1996.) Preliminary estimates from the FBI, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and AH Datalytics report substantial declines in crime and violence in the beginning of 2024.
Findings
Using data from the Live Crime Tracker, a city panel that collects daily crime reports from the open records of 49 mid-sized and large U.S. cities, we find that both property and violent crime declined at a historically anomalous rate from January 1 to June 30, 2024, compared with the same period in 2023.
- Three major types of crime declined by more than 22 percent: Homicide (-22.3 percent), Burglary (-22.5 percent), and Motor Vehicle Theft (-22.1 percent).
- Robbery declined 13.9 percent, Larceny/Theft declined 8.9 percent, and Simple Assault declined 6.3 percent.
- Aggravated Assault (-1.1 percent) and Sex Offenses (-4.4 percent) were essentially unchanged from the prior year.
Statistical Significance Testing
The use of Live Crime Tracker’s daily crime reports creates a rich panel dataset that allows for statistical significance testing, which has not accompanied the reporting of national crime statistics previously. Because changes in crime are typically small overall, but individual city experiences may vary substantially, we use significance testing to draw conclusions about whether observed changes are meaningful. There is substantial skepticism toward the crime declines of 2023 and 2024, and this type of analysis lends credibility that the changes reported here are real and tell the story of what residents of these cities are experiencing.
With the rich, daily data in Live Crime Tracker’s city panel, we can report with confidence that for the first half of 2024:
- The declines in Burglary, Larceny/Theft, Motor Vehicle Theft, and Robbery are statistically significant at p<0.05.
- The declines in Homicide (p=0.106) and Simple Assault (p=.061) are not significant at conventional thresholds (p<0.05). However, the magnitude of the decline exceeds the average change observed in the historical record (1960-2022).
- The declines in Aggravated Assault and Sex Offenses are not statistically significant.
The decline in Homicide highlights the importance of statistical significance testing and warrants further discussion. It has been widely suggested that crime reporting may have declined during the pandemic and that official crime reports may understate actual crime levels. Homicide is an important indicator because it is the most valid and reliable measure.
While overall, Homicide declined by 22.3 percent, there is substantial variation at the city level. Some cities report Homicide declines in the first half of 2024 that are almost double the national average, while several cities report small increases. This generates a large confidence interval around the mean Homicide decline. Given that other reports find substantial homicide declines for the same period, we would expect that if more cities reported open crime data daily that could be included in our study, the confidence interval would be smaller, and the change would be significant.
Without more data, what can be said is that Homicide has declined at an unprecedented rate nationally, but the experience of any specific city and its residents may be substantially different from the national average.
2023 Rate per 100,000 | 2024 Rate per 100,000 | Difference per 100,000 | Percentage Change | P-value | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aggravated Assault (n=43) | 233.64 | 231.15 | 2.49 | -1.1% | 0.893 |
Burglary (n=49) | 373.68 | 289.49 | -84.20 | -22.5% | 0.037 |
Homicide Offenses (n=48) | 14.57 | 11.31 | -3.26 | -22.3% | 0.106 |
Larceny/Theft Offenses (n=49) | 1,243.91 | 1,113.54 | -110.4 | -8.9% | 0.009 |
Motor Vehicle Theft (n=46) | 622.62 | 485.32 | -137.3 | -22.1% | 0.005 |
Robbery (n=49) | 112.40 | 97.12 | -15.28 | -13.6% | 0.039 |
Sex Offenses (n=37) | 38.46 | 36.75 | -1.71 | -4.4% | 0.493 |
Simple Assault (n=38) | 424.20 | 397.49 | -26.71 | -6.3% | 0.061 |
Data used in this study can be viewed at the Live Crime Tracker website maintained by NORC’s Center on Public Safety & Justice.
Methods
The authors used publicly available data from local governments and police agencies to examine crime by category from January 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024. The initial list of cities was created using the most recent year of U.S. census data available. After compiling a list of cities with publicly available crime data in each of the eight categories described above, the cities were categorized by how frequently their data were updated, the type of data reported (i.e., raw incident data, aggregated monthly counts, or quarterly reports), and how and which crimes were reported (NIBRS offense codes or other categories). Project criteria required that cities report incident-level data and update the data frequently, with no regular severe lags.
The data are reported here in a minimally adjusted format. All data from the 49 U.S. cities available were normalized such that the eight crime categories included the same data across all cities. Data from Honolulu, Hawaii, was missing for much of 2023, so Honolulu was excluded from the study. Data from Hartford, Connecticut; Charleston, South Carolina; Burlington, Vermont; and Atlanta, Georgia, were missing for more than half of the first six months of 2024 and were excluded. Within the 49 cities included in the analysis, missing data for short periods was imputed in two ways. For gaps of less than five days or less than 15 percent of one-month, missing data were assumed to be missing completely at random and imputed as the value of the previous valid day. For gaps at the end of the data series, missing data were imputed as the average of all prior valid reported days in 2024. There were 231,000 valid observations (equivalent to one day of reported data per city). Three observations showed extreme values in aggravated assault (more than ten times the magnitude greater than any prior reported day), and these values were winsorized at 10.
Discussion
We found substantial variation across the cities in the panel. This suggests that two causal mechanisms are affecting national crime statistics. First, national crime statistics consistently show that violence peaked in 2021-2022 and has declined from that peak. This also indicates that macro forces are affecting crime and violence across the United States. These macro factors likely include a “return to business as usual” after the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions for local governments, which include police, courts, and schools. Other widely hypothesized macro factors include substantial federal government investments in general support for local governments and specific support for crime prevention and intervention measures, including unprecedented investments in community violence interventions.
Second, the results show substantial variation at the city level, suggesting the micro forces specific to those cities are either enhancing macro trends or suppressing those factors. These micro forces likely fall into two categories. First, the macro forces described above have been unevenly implemented in cities. Second, crime and violence are hyper-local phenomena, and the momentum of prior pandemic-related violence may exceed the effect of more recent prevention and intervention policies and practices.
Overall, the decline in several major categories of crime observed in the first half of 2024 is unprecedented in national crime statistics. It is imperative that we make efforts now to understand the why and how of this change. With that understanding, our cities, states, and policies will be best prepared for today and the future.
About NORC at the University of Chicago
NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.
Contact: For more information, please contact Eric Young at NORC at young-eric@norc.org or (703) 217-6814 (cell).
About the Center on Public Safety & Justice
NORC’s Center on Public Safety & Justice develops actionable, evidence-based solutions to crime and victimization. The Center integrates our multidisciplinary team of experts in criminology, demography, economics, and public health and NORC’s industry-leading survey data collection capacity. Our holistic approach and longstanding partnerships with diverse local stakeholders in the hardest-hit communities allow us to identify programming innovations at every societal level.
About the Live Crime Tracker
Data for this study are developed from the panel reported through the online tracker—livecrimetracker.norc.org—which provides real-time data for 54 U.S. cities in eight crime categories, including homicide, burglary, and aggravated assault. The Live Crime Tracker includes in-depth city crime profiles, interactive maps, and a daily crime tracker that allows users to analyze trends over time and make comparisons across locations. It should be noted that the tracker compiles data shared by local governments, and some of the data they report are incomplete.