A Survey of Crime Experts Deflates the 'Trump Effect' That Supposedly Reduced Homicides
The respondents did not think much of the policies that the president says produced "the largest drop in violent crime in American history."
After surging during the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. homicide rate has declined sharply in the last few years, hitting a record low in 2025. Although President Donald Trump says he is responsible for that welcome development, a new report from the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) suggests that factors unrelated to his policies played a much more important role.
Trump has been eager to cite the CCJ while claiming credit for the homicide drop. But he is unlikely to tout this report, which is based on a survey of 48 crime experts who convened to assess four dozen possible explanations for the decline. None of them thought the federal policies highlighted by Trump were major contributors.
Last August, the FBI reported that the homicide rate fell by 18 percent from 2024 to 2025, an unprecedented drop. "The 2025 murder rate of 4.1 per 100,000 inhabitants is tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest murder rate," the FBI said. The CCJ, based on data from criminologist Randolph Roth's 2009 book American Homicide, goes further, saying the 2025 rate was the lowest recorded since at least 1900—a conclusion that Trump has repeatedly echoed.
Trump immediately took credit for that historic drop. "We have the numbers down because of what the federal government's doing," he averred during a speech at the Nassau County, New York, police academy on August 14. "Everyone knows we've done an amazing job."
Four days later, a White House press release reinforced that message. "President Trump Delivers the Largest Drop in Violent Crime in American History," the headline said. Trump "backed law enforcement, empowered the FBI to hunt predators instead of political targets, and rejected the failed Democrat lunacy that left communities reeling," the White House bragged. "The results are clear: fewer murders, fewer victims, and safer streets."
In response to a CCJ report on data for the first half of this year from a sample of U.S. cities, the White House likewise described the continuing drop in violent crime as "the direct result of the Trump Administration's relentless efforts to enforce the rule of law, back the police, and surge resources into communities long abandoned by Democrats." It credited Trump's National Guard deployments, saying "the steepest homicide drops have come in cities where the Trump Administration stepped in after Democrat leaders failed to act."
Trump "promised to make America safe again," the White House said, "and the data proves he is delivering faster and more decisively than any Administration in history." In case you missed the point, a subsequent press release described recent crime trends as "the Trump Effect in full force."
That "Trump Effect," according to Vice President J.D. Vance, includes immigration enforcement. "When you get the violent criminals out of your country, you see the largest drop in violent crime in the history of the United States of America," Vance said at a rally in Iowa last month, "because we got the bad guys out."
Trump agrees. "We have the most secure border in American history," he bragged during his September 22 speech to the U.N. General Assembly. "Nobody comes in, unless they're invited, unless they have permission….As a result, last year we achieved the largest drop in violent crime ever recorded."
There were a few obvious problems with these claims. The downward trend in homicides began in 2023, two years before Trump began his current term. And if Trump deserves credit for the continuation of that trend, doesn't he also deserve blame for the huge 2020 spike in homicides, which likewise happened on his watch? The truth is that neither inference is justified without additional evidence, especially since presidents have a limited role in law enforcement, which is primarily a state and local function, and many factors other than federal policy affect crime rates.
The CCJ's survey of crime experts, which included 48 possible explanations for the recent decline in homicide, provides further grounds for skepticism. Although "no single factor was viewed as the dominant explanation for the decline," the CCJ says, 57 percent of the participants viewed "easing pandemic-related social and economic disruption" as "a major contributor."
That was the only factor viewed as a major contributor by most of the experts. But the CCJ also asked the respondents to list the five factors they believed had the biggest influence. None of the Trump administration policies that the president says are responsible for the drop in homicides made any of those lists.
In addition to the fading impact of the pandemic, which 51 percent of the participants listed, the "top contributors" included expansion of community violence prevention programs (64 percent), increased use of "focused deterrence" aimed at "high-risk individuals and groups" (43 percent), increases in local government capacity (40 percent), and increases in public safety and support services "relative to demand" (28 percent). The next five factors most commonly rated as top contributors were expansion of city or state violence prevention offices (23 percent), an increase in proactive policing (ditto), a decline in "unstructured socializing" among teenagers (19 percent), aging of the population (17 percent), and increased mortality among people at high risk of violence (15 percent).
By contrast, none of the participants thought Trump's National Guard deployments had made a "major" contribution, and just one perceived a "limited" impact. No one listed that factor as a top-five contributor. Nor did anyone mention increased immigration enforcement as a top contributor, although two participants said it had played a "limited" role.
The CCJ did not specifically ask about FBI arrests, another explanation favored by Trump. The survey did ask about improvements in homicide clearance rates, which 11 percent of the experts viewed as a top contributor. But since the FBI accounts for a small share of violent crime arrests (about 8 percent in 2025), Trump is surely overrating the agency's role in reducing homicides.
Less concretely, the White House says Trump has "backed law enforcement," which would seem to fall into the category of "presidential public safety signals," another potential factor that the crime experts considered. Through "rhetoric, public statements, and the way they frame personnel choices and enforcement priorities," the CCJ explains, presidents might "influence the behavior of police and prosecutors," "affect public trust and cooperation with law enforcement," or "change how likely people believe they are to be caught or punished." Three participants credited that factor with a "limited" impact, and none thought it was a top contributor.
Most of the proposed explanations "received little support," the CCJ notes. In addition to National Guard deployments, immigration enforcement, and presidential signals, the factors with low ratings included homeless encampment removals, improved housing stability, electronic monitoring, GLP-1 medications (on the theory that they "reduce impulsivity, craving, heavy substance use, or related behaviors"), declining cash use, DNA databases, neighborhood crime alerts, increased incarceration, and increased pretrial detention.
"The drop in homicide over the past four years is one of the most significant public safety developments in decades," says CCJ President Adam Gelb. "Theories and claims abound, and sorting among them is essential if we're going to sustain the progress. This diverse array of researchers took the challenge seriously, testing competing explanations, debating the evidence, and making tough judgments. Their effort leaves the country with a much clearer picture of what likely contributed, what probably did not, and what we still need to learn."