The Justice Department says Americans reported far less violent and property crime in 2025 than the year before, releasing preliminary survey data Monday that shows the steepest one-year drop in victimization since the government began tracking it in 1973.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), the Justice Department's statistical arm, found that "serious violent victimization" — rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault, but not simple assault — fell 25%, from 9.9 to 7.4 incidents per 1,000 people age 12 and older. Aggravated assault alone dropped 31%, from 4.5 to 3.1 per 1,000, and robbery fell 27%. In raw numbers, the survey estimates about 7.5 million violent victimizations in 2025, down from 8.2 million in 2024.

Property crime victimization fell too, down 19% to 111.2 incidents per 1,000 households, with motor vehicle theft down roughly 29% and burglary or trespassing down 25%. The findings come from the National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual Census Bureau-administered poll of roughly 150,000 households that is considered the government's most complete crime measure because it captures incidents never reported to police.

A new instrument, and a political rollout

The numbers come with an asterisk: 2025 is the first full year of results from a redesigned version of the survey, which BJS says cannot be directly compared to the legacy instrument used in prior years — meaning the "since 1973" framing applies to the general victimization trend, not an apples-to-apples methodology. The data is also explicitly preliminary; BJS says final 2025 estimates won't be published until 2027, and when simple assault is folded back into the violent-crime total, independent researchers flagged that broader shift as statistically insignificant.

The release follows a similarly framed rollout of FBI crime data earlier this year showing violent crime fell 9.3% in 2025 — the largest annual drop since the FBI began compiling estimates in 1936 — with the murder rate falling to a roughly 20-year low, according to CBS News's reporting on the survey.

"THIS REPORT IS PROOF THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP'S 'MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN' AGENDA IS WORKING."

That assessment came from Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who added that the administration remains committed to "ensuring every American can live, work, and raise a family without fear." The Justice Department's own press release was headlined to declare violent crime "plummeted" in 2025, underscoring how directly the numbers are being used in administration messaging roughly a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Outside researchers have not disputed the topline decline itself, but have noted the redesigned survey instrument makes historical comparisons more complicated than the administration's framing suggests, and that the full picture — including simple assaults — shows a smaller, less statistically clear-cut shift.

What's next: BJS has not yet set a date for the final, non-preliminary 2025 victimization estimates, which are expected in 2027 and could revise the current figures. In the meantime, expect the 25% figure to feature heavily in closing-week midterm messaging from the White House and congressional Republicans, with Democrats and criminologists likely to press on the methodology caveats.