Homicides up 30 percent in largest increase on record, FBI says

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2020 was published Monday, showing homicides increased nearly 30 percent last year from 2019.

This data marks the first time in four years that the estimated number of violent crimes in the U.S. increased from the previous year, the FBI said in a statement.

Violent crime increased by 5 percent from 2019 to 2020, according to the FBI, while overall crime was down 6 percent during the same time period.

“In 2020, there were an estimated 1,277,696 violent crimes,” the agency said. “When compared with the estimates from 2019, the estimated number of robbery offenses fell 9.3 percent and the estimated volume of rape (revised definition) offenses decreased 12.0 percent.”

The 2020 jump in homicides, however, marked the “largest single-year increase” the FBI has reported since it began collecting the data in the 1960s, according to CNN.

There were 21,570 reported homicides last year.

The homicide rate per 100,000 people was 6.5 in 2020, still well below when murder rates peaked around 9.8 per 100,000 in the early 1990s, according to the FBI’s data. 

More offenders and victims involved in violent crimes were between ages 20 and 29 than any other age group, the data showed. 

The information is considered far from comprehensive as submitting data for the report is optional. About 85 percent of agencies that were eligible to participate in the report submitted data, according to the FBI. Some of the cities that did not submit data included New York, Chicago and New Orleans, CNN reported.

The FBI’s report also estimated that nationwide law enforcement agencies made about 7.6 million arrests last year.