America's variable murder rate: how does your state measure up?

The murder rate in the United States changes tremendously according to geography, even at the state level. Some states experience up to 14 times more homicides per capita than others, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over a 25-year period in an analysis by the Murder Accountability Project.

Generally, homicides are most common in southern states and least common in the Northeast. In 2024, murders were least common in Vermont which reported only 1.3 homicides per 100,000 population. That same year, homicides in Mississippi occurred at the rate of 18.6 killings per 100,000 population. But the variances between states even in the same region is significant.

CDC data was used in this study because many police departments in states like Florida and Mississippi do not participate in reporting crime information to the FBI's entirely voluntary Uniform Crime Report program. Since it is illegal to process human remains without a death certificate, the CDC is able to report much more complete information.

The homicide rate also varies enormously over time. You can use the year selector at the top of the map to watch how murder rates change over time. To access this interactive map to see rates in your state, click on the map image above or click here.

More good news for homicide clearance rates in America

Homicide clearance rates improved again in 2024, rising above the all-time low rate recorded two years before.

The FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services division estimated that 61.4 percent of homicides in 2024 were either cleared through the arrest of offenders or through special circumstances such as the death of offenders during the process of arrest. This was an improvement that built on the 57.8 percent clearance rate reported in 2023.

These were welcomed improvements over the 52.3 percent clearance rate in 2022, the lowest national clearance rate ever reported by the FBI. To see the Murder Accountability Project's interactive chart of the history of declining clearance rates, click here.

Homicide clearance rates in the United States are considerably lower than in most other industrialized nations. Clearance rates also vary dramatically from state to state and among police departments within each state. See the "Clearance Rate" tab to determine homicide occurrences and clearances in your community.

The improvement in homicide clearances occurred during a simultaneous decline in the total number of murders, allowing over-burdened homicide units to make headway in the nation's large backlog of unsolved killings. Homicides have declined by more than 5,000 annual murders since 2021.

This drop followed the nearly 30-percent spike in killings that began the week that George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, prompting thousands of anti-police protests. That spike in fatal violence lasted three years but, finally, subsided in 2023 and 2024.