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Economy

Murders Rose to Over 17,000 in US Last Year

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Murders Rose to Over 17,000 in US Last Year

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Violent crime rose in 2016, as did the number of murders in the United States. The data show that violent crime is back on the rise after falling several years. The news will fuel the argument over whether law enforcement or demographic changes are the primary cause.

According to the new 2016 Crime in the United States report:

Violent crime increased for the second consecutive year, while property crime decreased for the 14th straight year, according to the FBI’s annual report on national crime statistics released today. There were an estimated 17,250 murders in the U.S. last year, an 8.6 percent increase from 2015.

Overall violent crime rose 4.1 percent last year, while property crime fell 1.3 percent compared to 2015 figures.

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There were 1.2 million violent crimes in the United States last year. That is a five-year increase of 2.6%. The 10-year trend continues to be down, by 12.3%, according to the report.

The FBI’s summary of the categories of crime and their figures in 2016:

Last year’s data shows there were 95,730 rapes reported to law enforcement, based on the UCR’s legacy definition.

Of the violent crimes reported to police in 2016, aggravated assault made up 64.3 percent, while robbery was 26.6 percent. Rape (legacy definition) accounted for 7.7 percent of the violent crimes reported last year, and murder made up 1.4 percent.

About 7.9 million property crimes were reported to the UCR, with losses (excluding arson) of about $15.6 billion.

The report estimates that law enforcement agencies made about 10.7 million arrests in 2016 (excluding arrests for traffic violations).

There has been an ongoing discussion about why crime rates have fallen recently. The same debate could apply to 2016 and its modest increase.

One school of thought is that better law enforcement has lowered crime rates. The other is that demographic trends are the primary cause. As the population has aged, violent crime has dropped. Lower unemployment rates also may be a factor.

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Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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