Annotated Charts, Part I: US Crime across Cities and Time

The US violent crime rate quadrupled from 1960 to 1992. Over the same period, the property crime rate more than doubled. Then came the long drop.

Since 2012, the US violent crime rate has fluctuated a bit, but it’s still higher than in 1960, when the violent crime rate was 161 crimes per 100,000 population, compared to a rate of 381 per 100,000 in 2022 (the most recent year available).

However, in some parts of the US, property and violent crime rates are still higher than their countrywide peaks in the 1980s and 1990s.

As to why some cities are so much safer than others, that’s for another post.