Several months ahead of the federal release of Uniform Crime Report data, crime analyst Jeff Asher took a look at newly released UCR data from 14 states and compared it to 2022 data. In his comparison, he found lower murder and violent crime rates for 2023 in nearly all of the states whose data he was able to analyze. Violent crime dropped in all but two of the 14 states -- Illinois and Wyoming -- with drops as high as 19.5% in Montana and 10.3% in Nevada. Similarly, murders dropped in 12 of the states, all except Rhode Island, which only had 28 murders in 2023, despite a gain of 55.6% from 2022; and in Wyoming, which only reported 14 murders for 2022 and again in 2023, making for no change.
Asher said the examination does not put a number behind national crime trends. “It does, however, provide confidence behind the assessment that murder fell sharply in 2023 while reported violent crime likely fell a smaller amount, he writes.