The numbers came out Monday, and they are hard to ignore. The Justice Department released a survey showing a 25% drop in violent crime between 2024 and 2025. That is about 669,000 fewer violent incidents across the country. The agency called this the largest single-year decrease in the survey’s long history. This sharp decline marks a turning point for public safety that officials say is working. Property crimes also took a big hit, with theft and break-ins falling by 19%.
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward did not hold back on the cause. He told reporters that these results prove President Trump’s agenda is working. “This report is proof that President Trump’s ‘Make America Safe Again’ agenda is working,” Woodward said. He added that the safety of law-abiding Americans is the top priority. The White House linked these gains to the deportation of over 400,000 immigrants with criminal records. Officials argue that this strict enforcement stopped crime before it started.
Not every government report shows the same picture, but this one stands out. The survey asks regular people if they were victims of crime, rather than just counting police reports. This method catches crimes that never get reported to the authorities. The Washington Examiner noted that the FBI’s earlier stats showed a smaller drop in assaults. The FBI said assaults fell by 7.2%, while this new survey found a 31% drop. That gap suggests crime is falling faster than official police records show.
Some specific categories saw massive changes. Aggravated assault victimization fell by 31%, or roughly 390,000 fewer incidents. Robberies dropped by 27%, meaning 172,000 fewer victims. Even car thefts went down by 29%, saving owners from 349,000 stolen vehicles. The Daily Wire reported that these declines are the biggest one-year drops since the survey began in 1973.
President Trump sent federal law enforcement to trouble spots to help local police. One year after federal teams arrived in Memphis, murders fell by 37%. The U.S. Marshals Service shared data showing 13,000 arrests and over 2,200 guns seized in that city alone. They also saw sexual assaults drop by 30% and robberies fall by 47%. This initiative was enabled by Governor Bill Lee alongside the Tennessee National Guard.
Washington, D.C. saw similar results after a year of federal task force work. There, agents arrested 6,000 individuals, comprising 35 murder suspects and 100 gang members. The teams also found 25 missing children and took 2,000 illegal firearms off the streets. Polls show that Tennesseans overwhelmingly support this surge in law enforcement. The Daily Wire highlighted that this cooperation between federal and state officials is paying off.
The survey estimates that 7.5 million violent crimes happened in 2025, down from 8.2 million in 2024. The FBI further observed that the murder rate reached 4.1 per 100,000 people, marking the lowest level in over fifty years. However, the Justice Department statisticians warn that the new survey method is different from past years. This means the new estimates cannot be directly compared to figures from before January 2025. The shift in how data is collected makes the recent drop even more notable.
Woodward said the success reinforces the commitment to letting every family live without fear. He emphasized that under President Trump and Attorney General Blanche, safety comes first.
