Violent crime dropped by 25% last year, the largest single-year decline ever recorded by the survey, according to preliminary data from the Justice Department’s annual victim report.
Aggravated assaults fell 31%, robberies were down 27%, motor vehicle theft fell 29% and overall property crimes fell 19% in the data, based on a survey of more than 100,000 households. All those are also records from the survey, which has been conducted for more than 50 years.
The drops are even larger than the FBI’s crime statistics, which are based on crimes reported to law enforcement agencies. Because many crimes go unreported, the numbers do not necessarily match.
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Justice Department officials argued that the victim survey is a better measure because it estimates the actual incidence of crime, based on those who experience it.
“This report is proof that President Trump’s ’Make America Safe Again’ agenda is working,” said Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. “This success reinforces our commitment to ensuring every American can live, work, and raise a family without fear.”
According to the victim data, rapes and sexual assaults in the U.S. fell to about 75,000 in 2025, down from approximately 138,000 in 2024.
Aggravated assaults dropped from about 594,000 to 410,000 — a 31% decrease — while simple assaults grew by nearly 8%, from 359,000 to 387,000. Property crimes fell from 492,000 to 324,000, with drops in every category, including burglary, vehicle theft and vandalism.
Because of the nature of the report as a survey of victims, it cannot include homicides.
President Trump has claimed credit for better safety, pointing to stricter border enforcement and faster deportations from the U.S., and a surge of federal law enforcement into communities nationwide.
“This is what happens when you have an administration that prioritizes the safety and security of Americans and our communities,” Attorney General Todd Blanche said Monday.
Despite the apparent gains, Republicans do not appear to be getting much political traction from the improvements.
Just 2% of voters rated crime as the top issue in the latest Economist/YouGov poll, while 4% of voters in the latest Reuters/Ipsos survey said crime would be their top deciding issue in selecting congressional candidates this year.
The victimization data is unlikely to change that, in part because the FBI crime data usually gets more attention. Some experts, however, see reason to question the FBI’s numbers.
In 2023, for example, the FBI data suggested the pandemic-era wave of crime was easing, while the victimization survey indicated it was still raging.
If people are reluctant to report crimes to police, then they do not show up in the FBI data. They may be more willing to report them on an anonymous survey.
Justice Department officials suggested that the FBI data is particularly susceptible to the level of confidence Americans have in police. As crime rates rise, people may report fewer crimes, figuring they will not be solved.
By contrast, if the crime rate is dropping, as the victims’ survey suggests, more people may report incidents, which could explain why the FBI data showed smaller gains last year.
For example, the FBI reported crime data showed a 7.2% drop in aggravated assaults, or less than a quarter of the 31% drop indicated by the victims’ data.
The FBI has acknowledged some hiccups in the past.
In 2024, the FBI corrected data that originally showed a slight 1.7% drop in violent crime from 2021 to 2022. Just before the 2024 presidential election, however, the FBI revised the numbers to show a 4.5% increase.
Officials at the time said they changed their reporting methods, and local police departments struggled to submit their data on time. The revisions were made after more data was supplied.
The victimization report avoids those pitfalls by relying on the same methodology of surveying a massive number of households.
The response rate, however, has dropped. In 2000, 93% of households replied, compared with just 53% last year. Even as response rates fell, a massive expansion in the overall sample size pushed the total number of interviews past 152,000.
Still, the total number of households targeted was nearly 102,000, and the total number of people in those households who were actually interviewed was more than 152,000. In 2000, fewer than 80,000 people were interviewed.
The 2025 data faced one hurdle: the lengthy government shutdown in October and November 2025 meant that interviews ceased.
The survey is conducted by career employees at the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Susannah N. Tapp, one of the two named authors of the report, also authored the reports for the Biden years. The other named author, Jennifer L. Truman, has worked on the survey for more than a decade.
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