Trump claims credit for murder drop. It's not that simple. | Opinion

America is experiencing one of the sharpest crime declines in modern history ‒ and a political fight over who deserves the credit. That debate is inevitable and understandable. It also risks obscuring the key lesson.

President Donald Trump claimed responsibility during his State of the Union address Feb. 24: "Last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline, think of it, in recorded history. The lowest number in over 125 years ‒ year 1900."

Trump attributed the potential 125-year record drop in homicides and in crime in general to his aggressive immigration enforcement and deployment of the National Guard to several cities. Critics counter that massive pandemic-era social spending under President Joe Biden and expanded community violence prevention programs account for the progress. Each side offers a clean and politically convenient story of cause and effect.

But crime does not move in tidy partisan lines. When fatal violence falls this dramatically, there is real danger in reducing a complex social shift to a straightforward political victory. Oversimplifying what is happening risks misunderstanding the very forces that could sustain it.

Crime drop deserves celebration ‒ and demands serious inquiry

Data from the Council on Criminal Justice indicate that homicides in three dozen large cities dropped 21% in 2025 alone and 44% since their 2021 peak. If this and other snapshots are confirmed nationally by forthcoming federal statistics, the homicide rate could reach its lowest level in more than a century.

Most other major crime categories are posting double-digit drops as well. The rates are not simply returning to their pre-pandemic levels, they’re blowing past them.

These figures are not abstract. They represent thousands of lives saved, families spared trauma and communities regaining stability after years of disruption. By any historical measure, this is a consequential public safety development ‒ one that both deserves celebration and demands serious inquiry rather than quick, self-satisfying conclusions.

The instinct in moments like this is to search for a single cause, a policy breakthrough or a strategy that suddenly worked. National crime trends, however, rarely yield to one-factor explanations, and that’s especially so now.

Murder and other crime are falling in cities that are governed by different political philosophies, operating under varied policing and prosecution models and facing distinct local economic conditions. Local policies and programs surely matter. But the striking consistency of the crime decline across the country suggests that macro-level forces are exerting enormous influence as well.

Tune out politics ‒ focus on these 3 big crime influencers

Tuning out the partisan clamor makes it easier to focus on three big forces moving at once: criminal justice operations and strategies, technological advances, and broad shifts in society and culture.

Criminal justice operations and strategies almost certainly play a role:

• Courts slowed by COVID-19 disruptions have largely resumed normal function.
• Police departments, on their heels after the protests of 2020, have reemphasized targeted enforcement strategies.
• Communities have scaled up violence prevention efforts and prisoner reentry programs to unprecedented levels, aided in part by federal recovery funds.
• Immigration enforcement has removed dangerous offenders while also sweeping in many people who pose little or no public safety risk.

Taken together, these developments may have enhanced deterrence at a critical juncture.

Technology is reshaping the landscape as well. The spread of public and private surveillance cameras and license plate readers has deterred would-be offenders while helping police solve more cases. The transition to digital transactions means fewer people carry cash, making them less attractive targets of a robbery.

At the same time, the gravitational pull of cyberspace ‒ particularly for younger people ‒ might be altering social routines historically associated with street violence. An especially intriguing theory, backed by survey data, suggests that teens are spending more time alone scrolling their phones rather than out carousing with friends. What has been devastating for adolescent mental health could turn out to be good for crime.

Broader social stabilization likely plays a role. As schools, workplaces, social programs, churches and civic institutions regained footing after COVID-19 disruption, emotional and economic stresses eased and daily routines strengthened. Drug markets appear to have steadied in certain pockets, and early evidence suggests that the opioid epidemic may be cresting ‒ a shift that could reduce the violence that accompanies illicit markets.

Also, amid a trend toward healthier lifestyles in general, people are drinking less alcohol, which should mean fewer bar fights and domestic assaults.

Zooming out even further, Americans today are less exposed to environmental toxins, such as lead, that are linked to poor impulse control and aggression. Researchers are also exploring whether medications that affect compulsive behavior, including widely used GLP-1 treatments for weight loss, may influence decision-making and risk-taking.

These expansive lines of inquiry underscore how forces far removed from conventional crime policy might be subtly shaping crime patterns in ways that unfold over decades.

Where does this leave the competing claims of credit? Immigration enforcement and violence prevention initiatives may each contribute at the margins. Given the concentration of serious violence among a relatively small group of individuals, removing active offenders from the streets or persuading them to put down their guns can have outsized effects.

A grim demographic reality could also be at work: The homicide spike of 2020-22 and overdose crisis of recent years removed tens of thousands of high-risk people from the population. These dynamics differ profoundly in their implications for families and communities, and for democracy. But they help illustrate why no single explanation captures more than a fraction of the full picture.

Researchers are still struggling to confidently explain the long-term crime drop that began in the early 1990s, so definitive answers about current trends will take time. But the absence of certainty is not an open license for partisan platitudes. Public safety is too consequential for that.

Through some complex tangle of mechanisms, lives are being saved. Progress that is not well understood, however, is progress that can be easily undone. The obligation now is disciplined inquiry ‒ and willingness to challenge assumptions ‒ so that today’s gains endure rather than evaporate.

Adam Gelb is president and CEO of the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice. He previously served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, held senior roles in state government, and led public safety initiatives at The Pew Charitable Trusts.