There has been some discourse about the homicide rate dropping fast in the USA over the last two years, with various claims about how this is downstream of different policies or cultural changes.
I wondered how much of this was US-specific, especially after seeing there's been a ~25% drop in homicides in London so far this year.
So I started looking for 2025 news on homicide rates and began seeing several large drops, Jamaica down 42% and Mexico down 16%, which made me wonder if this was a global trend.
I also think homicide is underdiscussed as part of broader global development even though there are annually more deaths from homicide (~400k in 2021) than conflict, terrorism and natural disasters.
And for 15-49 year olds specifically, it is the 9th leading cause of death globally, above malaria, drowning and drug overdoses.
Here's what I found when I looked at the most recent data, though it was pretty difficult to find current statistics, only 12 countries had data for some part of 2025, a few more had 2024/2023 figures, and many either don't publish homicide data or the figures are just too unreliable.
United States - 16,940 homicides, a rate of 5 per 100,000 people in 2024.
Following 2024's 15% drop (from a local peak), homicides have fallen another 20% through May 2025.
The rate of 5 per 100k was the lowest rate since 2015, if this decrease continues, 2025 will be the lowest rate ever.
Mexico - 25,469 homicides, 19.3 per 100k in 2024, a 19.6% drop compared to 2023.
So far in 2025 there is an additional 15.9% drop, reaching the lowest levels of violence since 2016.
Jamaica - 1,139 homicides, 40.1 per 100k in 2024, an 18.7% drop from 2023.
As of August 9th 2025, there were 415 homicides, a 42% year on year drop.
South Africa - 27,621 homicides, 43.5 per 100k in 2023/24.
27,494 in 2022/23, 43.8 per 100k. In Q1 2025 there has been a 12.4% drop compared to the same period in 2024. Although still high compared to a decade ago.
England and Wales - 535 homicides, 0.88 per 100k in 2024/2025 (year ending March 2025).
A 6% decrease from 23/24 and the lowest count since 2014 (533 homicides, 0.94 per 100k). Interestingly this is almost converging with the Japanese rate which has had a recent spike (0.73 per 100k).
In London up to August 31st 2025, there has been a ~25% drop compared to 2024 at the same point (55 homicides vs 74 last year). This is a bigger drop then recent years which has generally been 2-3% a year. With a population of ~9 million1, that would be a rate of 0.9 per 100k (if it is still 25% lower by the end of the year).
Canada - 788 homicides, 1.9 per 100k in 2024.
Canada has had a 23% drop2 through August 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, if this continues the projected rate is 1.36 per 100k.
Costa Rica - 880 homicides, 16.6 per 100k in 2024, a 3.5% drop from 2023 (still the second-most violent year on record).
As of July 31st 2025, the rate stands at 16 per 100k, a slight decline from 2024.
Honduras - 2,503 homicides, 25.3 per 100k in 2024, down 26.5% from 2023.
For the first 5 months of 2025, ~900 people have been killed, which would be a ~19% drop if this rate continues.
Ecuador - 6,986 homicides, 38.8 per 100k in 2024.
Despite a 12.8% drop from 2023, this was still the second-most violent year in Ecuador's history.
Between January and June 2025, Ecuador recorded a 47% increase in homicides compared to the same period in 2024, with an average of 25 murders per day
Spain - There were 84 homicides in the first three months of 2025. This is a decrease of 11.6% compared to the 95 recorded in Q1 of 2024, but not much of a change from 3-5 years ago.
The Philippines ~5k homicides in 2023.
Direct national reporting showed murder cases dropping from 1,535 to 1,243 in comparative 70-day periods between late 2024 and early 2025.
Bangladesh - 4,114 (2.38 per 100k), an increase from 3,023 (1.76 per 100k) in 2023. The spike in 2024 may have been due to political unrest as well as older homicides being filed.
The 2025 projection based on the first 6 months would suggest a rate of ~2.2 per 100k.
Out of the 12 countries I found with 2025 data, 10 had decreases larger than 5%, and only Ecuador had an increase (although a big increase).
Even though I couldn’t find more recent data for most countries, I found info from 2024/2023 for a lot of countries and thought it may be useful to see what the relatively recent trends have been like, going region by region.
Latin America and the Caribbean
A very useful resource for this research has been the Insight Crime 2024 Homicide Round Up article, I wish there was an organisation covering each of the other regions, it would have made this process a lot easier.
They also have a 10 year lookback to see how homicide data has changed in the last decade.
Central America and Mexico - 58% decline from 38 per 100k in 2015 to 16 per 100k in 2024
South America - Average rate declined by 22.6% over the last decade
The Caribbean - Average rate rose by 19% over the last 10 years (although a much smaller population than the other two regions)
Going back to changes in the last couple of years, ~120k people were murdered in Latin America and the Caribbean3 during 2024, putting the median homicide rate at around 20 per 100k. This is a reduction of ~7% from 2023.
Central America and Mexico: 18% decline from ~39k in 2023 to ~32k in 2024
South America: 5% decline from ~81k in 2023 to ~77k in 2024
Caribbean: 25% increase from 9.6k in 2023 to 11.6k in 2024 (mainly driven by Haiti, which contributes to over 60% of the homicides in the Caribbean)
Brazil - 44,127 homicides, 20.5 per 100k in 2024.
A 5.4% drop from 2023, and the lowest number since 2012.
Colombia - 13,341 homicides, 25.8 per 100k in 2024.
A 1.9% decrease from 2023.
Haiti - 7,302 homicides, 60.9 per 100k in 2024.
A 51.6% increase from 2023, although the data is very unreliable.
Venezuela - 6,884 homicides, 24.4 per 100k in 2024.
Down 2.2% from 2023, although about 10% higher than 2022.
The other countries in the region are all below 5,000 homicides per year, although with a wide range of rates.
Europe
Europe seemingly has good data on homicides but they take their time in releasing it. Data for 2023 was released in April 2025, and it’s hard to tell if anything has happened to homicide rates in the last 18 months.
The European Union recorded 3,930 homicides in 2023, 0.88 per 100k, up 1.5% from 2022 but 15.2% lower than 2013.
It can be a bit tricky comparing with a specific year, as it could have been a recent high or low, especially in smaller countries, although I think the picture from the biggest countries roughly matches the trends shown in the table above. Relatively stable in France and Germany, small decline in Spain and big declines in Italy, Poland and Romania.
A couple of countries do have more recent data than 2023:
Sweden, 92 homicides in 2024, 29 fewer than 2023, and the lowest number since 2014
Germany is a bit strange as they record attempts of "Murder, Manslaughter, and Killing on Request." You have to dig into their pdfs to see how many of those murder and manslaughter attempts were "vollendet" (completed)
Of the 2,303 attempted homicides in 2024, 584 were completed, which would give a rate of 0.7 per 100k, a drop of 14% and the lowest number since the 90’s and probably way before then, although data is harder to get from before reunification
I guess we’ll find out whether there has been a larger drop in homicides in Europe this year some time around spring 2027.
Asia
Asia has the most varied data quality with some good PDFs, but many governments provide limited statistics and I’ve had to rely on the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime for a lot of these figures.
I’m already a little bit suspect of UN data given their population projections (Nigeria could be potentially somewhere between 120 million and 240+ million people, and they still use DRC projections from a likely dodgy census done in the 1980’s), so it’s hard to take them at face value, and I won’t attempt to estimate how the region as a whole has changed.
In order of number of homicides (where there was data):
India - Roughly 40,000 homicides in 2022, from UNODC estimates with no recent national updates available.
Pakistan - 10.7k homicides in 2023 (4.33 per 100k) from UNODC aggregation.
China ~6k homicides, 0.44 per 100k in 2024, down from 0.5 in 2023, a 12% decline.
0.44 would rank among the world's lowest rates. However, with the frequency of mass murder incidents reported, suggests these official figures may be understated. The apparent decline could still be genuine if historical data suffered from similar underreporting.
Iran ~3.6k in 2023 giving a rate of 3.95 per 100k.
Thailand - According to UNODC, no data since 2011 when it was 3307 homicides. Wikipedia claims that the murder rate was 2.6 per 100k in 2024 but I couldn’t find any sources for that.
Iraq - A 22% drop in homicides in 2024 with 1,200 (2.58 per 100k) compared to 1,540 in 2023 (3.42 per 100k).
Indonesia - 1129 in 2023 (0.4 per 100k), a 32% increase from 2022. These numbers are so low for a recent middle income country that they are hard to believe.
Vietnam showed a drop from 1,461 homicides in 2023 to 911 in 2024, after relatively stable years averaging ~1,000 from 2008-2021 and a spike post COVID. Given the increase in population of ~10 million over this time the rate has decreased to 0.9 per 100k.
Japan - 2023 there were 912 homicides at 0.73 per 100k ( 853 in 2022, 0.62 per 100k).
South Korea - 265 homicides, 0.5 per 100k (preliminary data) in 2024. In 2023 there were 261 murders completes (they include attempts in their stats, even ones where no injury has happened, which was 801 attempts in 2023).
Malaysia - 215 up to November 2024, 261 in 2023.
Australia - 262 homicides between July 2023 and June 2024, an increase of 30 from the 232 recorded in 2022–23.
Africa
Reliable homicide data in Africa remains scarce and it’s hard to know how much of reported changes is just a sign of more accurate reporting.
Nigeria - According to UNODC there were 35,800 homicides in 2023.
The Nigeria Police Force recorded 3,219 homicides in 2017 (a rate of 1.6 per 100k).
The WHO estimated that the rate was 8.8 per 100k in 2021, which could be anywhere between ~10k and ~22k homicides depending on how large you think Nigeria is.
Uganda - 4,329 in 2024 (9.4 per 100k), up 2% from 2023
Kenya - 3,031 in 2023 (5.48 per 100k), down from 3,281 in 2021
Tanzania - 2,193 in 2024 (3.27 per 100k), 5% down from 2023
Caveats
Several countries likely to have high homicide counts are missing due to ongoing conflicts or unreliable data. This includes Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and parts of the Sahel region where state capacity has collapsed. Russia, Ukraine and Ethiopia have conflict-related gaps, while countries like DRC, Chad, Algeria and Angola have limited reliable crime statistics even in peacetime.
While homicides typically far outnumber conflict deaths globally, the UN noted that in 2022 the ratio of homicides to conflict deaths was 2:1.
With major conflicts in Ukraine and Ethiopia, combined with (potentially) declining homicide rates globally, it might soon be the first time since World War II that conflict deaths exceed homicide deaths in a single year.
It wasn’t that easy to find current, reliable homicide statistics. Many countries don't publish data regularly or they do but it’s in a PDF in a language I don’t understand and can’t easily translate on a website made in the 2000s.
This makes it challenging to assess whether the apparent global decline is genuine or simply reflects better data from countries that were already relatively peaceful.
If you do know of any good aggregators or individual sources of good data, please let me know, I feel like this is something that should be tracked more regularly than a UN report every few years.
Conclusion
While I spent more time CTRL-F’ing 400 page documents than thinking about why homicide might be dropping I do have a few rough guesses.
Ageing populations and declining youth cohorts (since violent crime peaks among teenagers and young adults)
The electricity → internet → smartphone (and/or) social media theory
For richer countries maybe just the last two, but for poorer countries, they’ll need electricity and internet first
This mechanism could either be
Smartphones providing better things to do with your time (like watching YouTube, playing games, social media)
Smartphones providing entertainment that makes homicides a less attractive idea (watching people live better lives/or the consequences of being a murderer appearing worse)
Social media allowing people to make more friends and not rely on gangs for that
Social media punishing people who commit these types of crimes with a higher likelihood of losing social status
Better law enforcement through surveillance, tech, etc. This may have been the case for the decline of serial killers
But I’m not really sure, and more data could come out later this year saying that actually there was an increase.
Side Track
I also got side tracked and looked at the global prison population. It looks like the number of incarcerated people grew from 11.1 million in 2013 to 11.7 million in 2023.
But the imprisonment rate declined from 150 to 145 per 100k as population growth outpaced incarceration, a 3.3% decrease in per capita terms.
Tricky to be exact as the last time ONS looked at London specific population was 2021, and since then there has been a larger amount of migration which may or may not be evenly distributed
Although this is from an X account that I don’t know, so may not be accurate.
Excluding Antigua and Barbuda, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Paraguay and Nicaragua who had no/too unreliable data
Thank you for sharing! These are hopeful trends. Reminded of " Better Angels" by Pinker. Do you think this can be seen as a larger trend, as in longterm decline in violence in general?
I think this may be due to "the system's" bounce back from the Covid disruption. It was common news that their was an uptick in crime or violence, in general, due to lockdown. So I guess it took a while for the system to get back to peak functioning.
Do you have the pre-covid homicide rates? I think it'll be very informative if we can get that time series.