When people talk about violent crime in America, there’s no shortage of opinions.
A new report from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) tries to cut through the politics by digging into the FBI’s latest homicide data. The findings cover where murders happen, who commits them, who the victims are, and how often murders cross racial lines.
Some of the numbers may surprise you.
One of the biggest takeaways is just how concentrated murder is in the United States. As we discussed earlier this week, the worst 1% of counties account for 41% of all murders while containing only about 20% of the country’s population. Expand that to the worst 2% of counties, and they account for 54% of murders despite making up just 30% of the population.
On the flip side, most counties rarely see a homicide at all.
More than half of U.S. counties—53%—recorded zero murders in 2024. Another 16% had just one. Together, those counties make up 69% of all counties in America but account for only 3% of the nation’s murders.
The report also looks at who is committing those murders.
According to the FBI data analyzed by the CPRC, Black offenders accounted for 56.4% of known murderers in 2024. Lott notes that the FBI’s race data combines Hispanic and non-Hispanic White offenders into a single “White” category. He argues likely understates the number of Hispanic offenders because ethnicity isn’t reported consistently across jurisdictions.