Serious Violent Crime Rate Fell 25% in 2025, Preliminary Federal Survey Finds

The rate of serious violent victimization fell 25% in 2025 compared with 2024, while household property victimization declined 19%, according to preliminary federal survey findings announced Oct. 26.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey found that violent victimization excluding simple assault declined from 9.9 incidents per 1,000 people age 12 or older in 2024 to 7.4 in 2025. That category includes rape or sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault.

Aggravated assault victimization fell 31%, from 4.5 incidents per 1,000 people in 2024 to 3.1 in 2025, according to the Justice Department’s announcement.

The 25% decline applies specifically to serious violent victimization, rather than the survey’s full violent crime category, which also includes simple assault. The survey does not measure homicide because it gathers information through interviews with living victims.

Household property victimization also declined substantially. The rate fell from 138.0 incidents per 1,000 households in 2024 to 111.2 in 2025.

Within that category, motor vehicle theft fell 30%, burglary or trespassing declined 25%, and other household theft decreased 19%, according to the department.

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward credited the findings to the Trump administration’s public safety agenda.

“This report is proof that President Trump’s ‘Make America Safe Again’ agenda is working,” Woodward said in the announcement.

The survey measures criminal victimization; the reported changes alone do not establish how much any particular policy contributed to the declines.

Unlike statistics based solely on police records, the National Crime Victimization Survey captures crimes both reported and not reported to law enforcement. According to the Justice Department, it collects information annually from a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 people age 12 or older in approximately 150,000 households.

The latest findings also come with methodological qualifications. BJS fully transitioned to a redesigned survey instrument in January 2025 and cautions that estimates from the redesigned instrument are not comparable to those produced by the legacy survey. The 2025 estimates remain preliminary and could change when final findings are published in 2027.

Separately, BJS reported that the national homicide victimization rate fell 17% in 2025, from 5.2 to 4.3 victims per 100,000 people. That report uses estimates based on law enforcement data through the National Incident-Based Reporting System, rather than the household victimization survey.