Here’s some great news: reports of both violent crime and property crime declined dramatically during the first quarter of 2024. Property crime specifically was down 15.1% as compared to the first quarter of 2023. Burglaries were down 16.7% while motor vehicle theft was down 17.3%. The Attorney General adds that “last year’s historic decline” is continuing. The only catch is that we be seeing a spike in auto theft finally flattening out.

First and foremost, where is this data coming from? The FBI maintains a crime database of reports made by 13,719 law enforcement agencies from around the country. Not every one of the 19,000 agencies in the U.S. voluntarily adds its reports to the database, but the ones that do serve over 90% of the total population.

The FBI has just finished sorting through all the reports it received from January, February, and March of 2024. When it compared its numbers with the same period from last year, the results were dramatic. Violent crime is down 15.2%, murders are down 26.4%, rapes are down 25.7%, aggravated assaults are down 12.5%, and robberies are down 17.8%.

We can also see some preliminary data from the entire year. AH Datalytics reports that in the first five months of 2024, murder rates in several large cities are 40% lower than they were during the same time in 2023.

So is there a catch? Possibly. The FBI database shows 772,943 vehicle thefts in 2017. That number fell to 751,904 in 2018 and dropped again to 724,872 in 2019. So far so good. But then during the pandemic, many types of crime shot up. In 2020, there were 810,400 reported vehicle thefts. That number climbed a bit more, landing at 849,741for 2021. Then there was a steeper climb to 942,174 in 2022.

The other big crime report, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ annual survey of crime victims, showed a similar pandemic-era increase. Its estimate for 2018 motor vehicle thefts was 534,010 or 4.3/1,000 citizens. For 2019, that dropped to 495,670 or 3.9/1,000. Then in 2020 it climbed to 545,810 or 4.3/1,000. 2021 climbed slightly to 558,670 and 4.3/1,000. Then 2022 saw a spike to 716,650 or 5.5/1,000.

What about violent crime? Tragically, the FBI reported a very similar spike in the murder rate in 2020.

The huge drops in violent crime and property crime in the past few months are great news. But one reason we are on track for “the largest one-year decline in American history” may be that there was a very temporary bubble of high crime rates.

How much of a bubble was that? Well, not only did it last less than three years, but crime rates never touched 1980s numbers (per capita). With all manner of crime coming back down, it seems that what experts call “The great crime decline of the 90s” was not temporary. Comparatively low 21st century crime rates are here to stay. And that’s something we can all be thankful for.

Next, you can learn what savvy car owners are doing to prevent the latest auto theft techniques, or learn why many Americans think crime’s rising in the Vox video embedded below: