Homicide Trends in the United States

Alfred Blumstein

Homicide rates in the United States had been declining steadily since they reached a peak in 1991–1993. As each report came out, the nation—and particularly the mayors and police chiefs—celebrated the steady decline. By 2000, the rates had reached their lowest level in more than 30 years. For most of that period, U.S. homicide rates oscillated between about 8 and 10 homicides per 100,000 population, a rate that is about five times that of most industrial countries. That rate was 8 in 1985 and climbed about 25% to a value of 10 by 1991, has been declining steadily since 1993, and by 2000 was under 6 per 100,000. These results are shown in Figure 2 , along with the graph for robbery (scaled down by a factor of 25), which follows the homicide rate rather closely. Obviously, that trend cannot continue indefinitely, and we started to see a flattening in ...

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