America Is Experiencing Its Safest Era in Over a Century and Texas Is Leading the Way

A Crime Drop Nobody Saw Coming

Crime rates have continued falling across a sample of large U.S. cities in the first half of 2026, with homicide rates dropping enough to put the nation on track for another historic low in killings. The numbers aren't just good — they're extraordinary. The Council on Criminal Justice's previous analysis estimated that the national homicide rate in 2025 was likely the lowest in more than a century, since at least 1900, based on preliminary data. That's not a rounding error or a statistical quirk. That's a generational shift in public safety.

A new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank found that nine of 13 crime categories tracked in 36 cities declined compared with the first six months of 2025, with homicides falling 18% — representing 215 fewer killings among the 30 cities that reported data. The broader picture is equally striking. Reported robberies dropped 17% compared with the first half of 2025, gun assaults fell 6%, and carjackings declined 47%.

Texas Joins the Historic Trend

Crime in Texas has been decreasing since 2023, according to Uniform Crime Reporting Data released by the Texas Department of Public Safety. In the last five years, crime in Texas peaked in 2022 — with a rate of 2,830.14 per 100,000 people — before trending downward. The descent has been steady and accelerating. Between 2022 and 2023, the state's crime rate decreased by 3.3%, and between 2023 and 2024, the crime rate dropped another 8.2%. Then, between 2024 and 2025, Texas' crime rate decreased by 13%.

One of the most striking stories is unfolding in South Texas. McAllen is celebrating its lowest crime levels in 40 years. McAllen, the second-largest city in the Rio Grande Valley with 151,000 people, reported a 21% drop in 2025. Brownsville, the Valley's largest city with 193,000 people, also had a 21% drop in crime in 2025. Meanwhile, homicides fell more than 50% in Arlington, Texas — one of the steepest declines of any city in the country.

What's Actually Driving the Drop?

Experts are quick to pump the brakes on simple explanations. "The honest answer is that no single actor gets to claim credit," said criminologist Alex del Carmen. "Declines this broad, occurring simultaneously in cities with very different policies, tell us structural and post-pandemic forces are doing much of the work." That's a crucial point — cities with wildly different political climates and policing strategies are all seeing improvements, which makes any single-cause explanation hard to sustain.

In Texas specifically, about 70% of statewide violent crime volume is concentrated in the most populated 25 jurisdictions. So when cities like Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas invest in hot-spot policing and violent crime reduction plans, the statewide numbers move. The ripple effect of targeted investment in major metros is real — and measurable.

A Warning Beneath the Good News

Not every city is celebrating. Austin, Texas; Minneapolis; Norfolk, Virginia; and Pittsburgh had homicide rates above their 2019 levels. And while the trend is overwhelmingly positive, some experts are cautioning that it may not last. Pandemic-era federal funding that helped cities address root causes of crime is set to lapse at the end of 2026, and one criminologist suspects the multi-year crime drop might soon end, saying, "The numbers are going to stabilize over the next 12 months."

That's the real question hanging over this moment of historic progress: whether communities can sustain these gains without the resources that helped produce them. The data tells a remarkable story of a safer America — but keeping it that way will require the same sustained commitment that got us here.