Murder rose by almost 30% in 2020

The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murder since the start of national record-keeping in 1960, according to data gathered by the F.B.I. for its annual report on crime, reported The New York Times.

The Uniform Crime Report will stand as the official word on an unusually grim year, detailing a rise in murder of around 29 percent. The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7 percent increase in 1968. The national rate — murders per 100,000 — still remains about one-third below the rate in the early 1990s.

The data is scheduled to be released on Monday along with a news release, but it was published early on the F.B.I.’s Crime Data Explorer website.

The F.B.I. said some numbers could change by Monday as it reviews possible discrepancies and receives updates. But the main conclusions of the data are highly unlikely to change.

Separately, an independent analysis of big cities finds at least one promising sign that the murder rate may be starting to flatten this year: The increase in murders this summer does not appear to be as large as the record spike last summer.

Here are the main takeaways from the crime data for 2020 as well as the best evidence of where things stand so far in 2021.

Previously, the largest one-year increase in total number of murders was 1,938 in 1990. The F.B.I. data shows almost 5,000 more murders last year than in 2019, for a total of around 21,500 (still below the particularly violent era of the early 1990s).

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