Is Donald Trump right that the U.S. crime rate is at its lowest in 125 years?

President Donald Trump has been celebrating what he says is a major crime reduction achievement in the United States. 

On at least 10 occasions from Jan. 29 to Feb. 8, Trump has offered a version of this statement: "The crime rate now is the lowest it's been since 1900. That's 125 years." One of those occasions was during an NBC News interview that aired Feb. 8 before the Super Bowl.

Trump referred to the crime rate, an umbrella category that includes four types of violent crime (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) as well as property crimes (burglary, larceny, car theft and arson). But when contacted for comment, the White House referred to a narrower measure: the murder rate.

The White House pointed to a Jan. 22 Axios article about the U.S. murder rate hitting its lowest level since 1900. The article cited a study by the Council on Criminal Justice, an independent criminal justice research group.

In its 2025 Crime Trends report, the council wrote that the 2025 homicide rate is on pace to become "the lowest rate ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900, and would mark the largest single-year percentage drop" on record. The crimes the report cited — murder and non-negligent homicide — are what’s counted in the FBI’s murder rate.

By the FBI’s definition, "murder" refers to the willful killing of one human being by another, as determined by police investigation and not requiring conviction of a defendant or a coroner’s ruling. 

Experts told PolitiFact the 2025 FBI murder rate will likely end up at a 65-year low. But saying it’s the lowest in 125 years is less certain, because data prior to 1960 is not comparable to later data.

Because the methodology was not consistent for all 125 years, "We just can’t say for sure" whether it’s an all-time low, said Jeff Asher, a crime data researcher.

Overall crime rate statistics 

Beyond murders and non-negligent manslaughter, the overall violent crime and property crime rates are also lower today than at least any point since the mid-1970s. Both measures have been on a long-term decline, going back to the early 1990s.

Ernesto Lopez, a senior research specialist with the Council on Criminal Justice, told PolitiFact the group did not examine any other type of crime rate when it cited the 125-year figure, only murder and non-negligent manslaughter. 

"So we can’t say that violent crime or property crime rates are at all time lows" going back as far as 125 years, Lopez said.

The rate for murder and non-negligent manslaughter dropped significantly in 2025

Because it takes time to fully calculate crime data, the council’s report uses trends in the currently available data to project what the 2025 murder rate will be once the FBI calculates and releases final numbers later this year. 

The Council on Criminal Justice said the rate for murder and non-negligent manslaughter will be about 4 per 100,000 residents. Asher offered a similar projection of about 4.2 per 100,000. 

Both estimates are below the previous record low of 4.4 per 100,000 people in 2014 — at least when compared with annual rates going back to 1960, when the FBI began using the same methodology it uses today.

The council and Asher agreed that the 2025 drop of about 25% is likely to become the largest one-year decline ever recorded.

Issues with historic recordkeeping

Whether the homicide drop is the lowest in 125 years is less certain.

Asher said FBI data on murder and non-negligent homicide is not apples-to-apples between 1930 and 1959, because the older data was based on a smaller share of the U.S. population and used definitions different from today’s. Before 1930, the FBI didn’t produce any equivalent data at all.

The problem with saying it’s a 125-year record, Asher said, is that doing so means including the not-fully-comparable 1930 to 1959 FBI data and 1900 to 1929 data from public health sources. The public health data counted homicides, a category that’s broader than murders and non-negligent homicides because it also includes killings considered justifiable. 

Lopez said his group has a "high degree of confidence" that once the final numbers for 2025 are released by the FBI later this year, the 2025 homicide level could be "the lowest ever recorded in the United States since 1900"

Our ruling

Trump said, "The crime rate now is the lowest it's been since 1900. That's 125 years."

Trump referred to the overall crime rate, which includes a range of violent crimes and property crimes. But the White House pointed to evidence of a record low murder rate, not overall crime.

Experts expect that when the final 2025 murder rate, as defined by the FBI, is released later this year, it likely will be the lowest in at least 65 years. 

Whether it is the lowest in 125 years is disputed, however, because experts say data prior to 1960 is not comparable to later data.

Overall violent crime and property crime are also at decades-long lows, but it’s unclear whether they are at record lows going back 125 years.

The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details. We rate it Half True.