Fewer crimes, fewer inmates in America

As always, Americans widely believe crime to be rising – not so much in their own town and neighborhood but out there.

What the data show is that the US is well on its way to giving 2025 the lowest murder rate ever recorded, after a sharp decrease in 2024 as well. Violent crime overall is following a similar pattern. Consistent national record-keeping began about 1960. Violence has been ebbing since the early 1990s, except for a brief spike during the pandemic.

One result of this long pattern of rising law and order: The prison population has dropped by 25 percent since 2009. The decline is destined to continue, because in 2007 young men under 20 serving time outnumbered men over 64 by more than five times. Now, those young men are only twice the prison population of the senior group.

So we live in a far safer country than a generation ago, and whatever the reasons, one of them does not appear to be that we’re locking more people up.

Sources: Jeff Asher, FBI, Real Time Crime Index, Gallup, Bureau of Justice Statistics