The curious case of the falling murder rate

 

Toronto, Canada -  Toronto's metro is generally considered among the safest in North America with a combined population of 7 million and a total homicide rate of less than 1 per 100,000 - photo Tamjeed, Pixels

by Gregory Saville

Two years ago, I wrote A Shot in the Dark: Murder Under U.S. Presidents about crime statistics and the curious habit of politicians taking credit when crime falls and blaming someone else when it rises.

This year, as has been the case since the 1990s, the U.S. homicide rate has continued to fall, aside from a blip during Covid. I have been writing about crime rate trends for 15 years. Five years ago, I wrote In the peaks and valleys of crime. And now having read the latest about declining homicide rates, here we are again. 

This time, before anyone takes credit, and before researchers delve into potential causes like tough laws, crime crackdowns, more security cameras, or goodness knows what, let’s take one extra step! 

Let’s not tune into the ideological bleating about tougher incarceration or the enforcement of illegal immigration. Let’s do a little experiment. Let’s look elsewhere and consider what has been happening to homicide outside the U.S.

San Francisco, California. "The Bay" metro area comprises numerous jurisdictions just under 5 million population. It's combined homicide rate is 3 per 100,000 - three times higher than Toronto.

 

THE EXTRA STEP

Criminologists often use homicide as one of the more reliable measures for comparing crime trends. I have written previously it is not perfect. All official crime statistics are surrogates for a much more complicated reality, and reporting and recording practices differ. But homicide suffers less from the non-reporting problems than other crime statistics.

That makes the North American comparison interesting.

Between 1990 and 2007, homicide rates (the number of homicides per 100,000 people) declined in all three North American countries:

• Mexico: 17.3 → 8.1 = 53% decline
• United States: 9.3 → 5.7 = 39% decline
• Canada: 2.37 → 1.82 = 23% decline

Therefore, by the end of the 1990–2007 period, Mexico's homicide rate was actually below the homicide rate the United States had experienced during its own peaks.

 

Numerous sources were drawn for this chart including: Canada — Statistics Canada, Homicide Survey, Table 35-10-0068-01; the United States, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data; The United States, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data; U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics - Homicide Trends in the United States; the UNODC Intentional-Homicide Series, distributed through the World Bank; and the Mexican historical series data.

Three countries with very different governments, policies, policing systems and social conditions. All experiencing substantial homicide declines during roughly the same period. Most strikingly, Mexico experienced the largest decline of the three! 

I wrote a while back that we should not do what Mexico is doing. This suggests I was wrong!

Mexican military in Michoacan, activated in the War Against Drug Trafficking - photo Diego Fernandez, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

THEN THINGS CHANGED

Then Mexico's rate explodes in 2007 from to 8.12 to 23.5 in 2011. What happened? 

Beginning in late 2006, the Mexican federal government launched a massive police and military crackdown against the drug cartels. The decades-old cartel ecosystem destabilized, traditional cartels fragmented, rival groups fought over territory, and homicide exploded. In 2015 another crackdown destabilized the situation again.  

 

Mexico City - the capital of Mexico has over 20 million population and the city proper 9 million. The homicide rate in the city proper is 8 per 100,000, over twice that of San Francisco and eight time higher than Toronto - Photo Alcantara, Pixels

The upshot was after declining for almost two decades, Mexico's homicide rate nearly tripled within a few years. This unintended consequence of state action is well documented by numerous sources, including Oscar Contreras Velasco. 

 

MEANWHILE, NORTH OF BORDER... 

All this time, Canada continued its long-term downward trajectory just like the U.S. Except for a blip during Covid, the homicide rate in both countries declined. Now, Canadian and American homicide rates have again fallen dramatically in step with each other. 

This is in spite of the fact that Canada has no U.S-style community violence interrupter programs, growing incarceration rates, nor immigration crackdowns. Yet the homicide rate still declines. In spite of the fact that Canadian police have generally cleared a substantially larger proportion of homicides (70%) than police in the United States (54%), both U.S. and Canadian rates decline.

As for Mexico, note that, after the 2007 – 2017 decade of murder, homicide rates there too are falling as well, just as they were prior to the decade of murder.

Setting aside the 2007-2017 decade of unitended consequences, Mexico, Canada, and the newest U.S. figures simply add another chapter to that same story that has been going in all three countries for a very long time.

 

With the exception of the Mexican decade of Murder, homicide rates in all three countries had an overall declining pattern - sources in above graph 

 

HOW CAN THIS BE? 

Here is the question this extra step asks: How can three different countries with very different governments, criminal-justice systems and social systems end with the same homicide reduction trend?

Let's be clear: Leaders make decisions that matter and governments implement policies that can help or hurt. Yet when similar declines appear across borders and across governments of very different political stripes, perhaps we should be cautious about congratulating the person standing beside the graph.

Here is a more interesting question: What does the graph itself tell us?

Homicide has been declining for a very long time. The crime decline began in the early 1990s and continued under leaders of all political parties and in different countries. Canada and the U.S. experienced similar long-term declines and in 2025, their homicide rates fell again.

None of this means governments and presidents are irrelevant. Policing, prevention, economics, demographics, and countless other factors matter.

Maybe macro trends within societies over the long periods of time affect crime trends beyond borders, governments and political parties. And maybe those kinds of trends are not found in national crime policies or statistical blips.

Perhaps leaders deserve a little less credit, and criminology deserves a little more curiosity.