The Survey That Asks Victims, Not Police, Says Serious Violent Crime Fell 25% in 2025

The Justice Department's own crime survey, the one that asks Americans directly whether they were victims, came out Monday. It says serious violent crime fell 25% in 2025, President Trump's first year back in office.

That survey is the National Crime Victimization Survey, run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics with the Census Bureau. Its new numbers show the rate of rape or sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault falling from 9.9 per 1,000 Americans age 12 and up in 2024 to 7.4 in 2025. In raw numbers, that's about 669,000 fewer serious violent crimes in a single year. The full figures are in the BJS report.

Why this survey matters

Every time the FBI reports crime going down, the same argument comes back: people stopped calling the cops, so the police numbers look better than real life. This survey ends that argument. It doesn't count police reports at all. Census interviewers asked 152,150 people in 101,980 households what happened to them, whether they told police or not.

Think of it like checking a restaurant two ways. One is the complaint box at the register. The other is calling up the customers at home. The FBI's numbers are the complaint box. This survey is the phone call. And the phone call came back even better.

Aggravated assault, the kind with a weapon or serious injury, fell 31% in the survey, from 4.5 to 3.1 per 1,000 people. The FBI's police data, released in August, had aggravated assault down 7.2%. Victims are reporting a much bigger drop than the police books show.

Homes and cars, too

It wasn't only violence. Property crime against households fell 19%, from 138.0 to 111.2 per 1,000 households. That's roughly 3.5 million fewer property crimes. Burglary or trespassing fell 25%. Motor vehicle theft fell 30%, which works out to about 349,000 fewer stolen cars, trucks and motorcycles.

This is the first full year of a redesigned version of the survey, which BJS switched to completely in January 2025. The 2024 numbers in the report come from the same redesigned survey, so this is an apples-to-apples comparison. BJS will publish its final 2025 numbers next year.

The killings count too

The victims survey can't count murders, because the victims can't be interviewed. So BJS put out a separate report last week, built from police data. It found 14,660 homicide victims in 2025, down from 17,720 in 2024. That's about 3,060 fewer Americans killed, and a 17% drop in the homicide rate, from 5.2 to 4.3 per 100,000 people. Back in 2021, the count was 23,060.

The FBI's final 2025 numbers, released in August, put the murder rate at 4.1 per 100,000. That ties 1955 and 1956 for the lowest since the FBI started national estimates in 1936.

What DOJ says did it

"This report is proof that President Trump's 'Make America Safe Again' agenda is working," Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in the Justice Department's release. "Under President Trump and Attorney General Blanche, the safety of law-abiding Americans will always come first."

Attorney General Todd Blanche put it this way on 𝕏: "This is what happens when you have an administration who prioritizes the safety and security of Americans and our communities."

The record backs him up. In 2025 the administration surged federal agents into Washington, D.C., and Memphis, went after cartels and gangs, and removed criminal illegal aliens by the hundreds of thousands. Crime fell in the FBI's police data, in the homicide count and in the victims' own answers.

The bottom line: For a year, critics waved off the FBI's numbers by saying people just weren't calling the police. Now the survey that skips the police and asks the victims has spoken. Fewer Americans were assaulted, robbed or broken into in 2025. Fewer had their cars stolen. And about 3,000 fewer were killed.