Top five cities with homicide rates

1. Why “top five” can’t be answered with one definitive list

Different sources use different populations (city proper vs. county vs. metro), different years (2023, 2024, mid‑2025), and different inclusion criteria; that produces divergent rankings. The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) and other mid‑year studies focus on samples of 30–40 reporting cities and report percentage changes (e.g., 17% fewer homicides among 30 study cities in H1 2025) rather than a universal top‑five ranking ^{[2] [5]}. Third‑party aggregators and advocacy maps use other methods and thus can name different “deadliest” cities ^{[6] [4]}.

2. What the CCJ mid‑2025 data actually says about trends

CCJ’s mid‑year 2025 analysis finds that homicide counts in its sample fell substantially versus prior periods: 17% fewer homicides in the 30 cities studied comparing H1 2025 to H1 2024 (327 fewer killings), and 14% fewer homicides versus H1 2019, with much of the national decline driven by large drops in a handful of high‑homicide cities ^{[2] [5]}. That framing stresses trend direction over single‑year rankings ^[2].

3. Which cities commonly appear near the top in multiple trackers

When authors do produce rankings, several cities repeatedly appear among the highest homicide rates across sources: St. Louis is cited as the highest or “murder capital” in multiple 2024–2025 summaries; Baltimore and New Orleans also regularly rank near the top ^{[3] [4]}. Note: specific per‑100,000 rates and ordinal positions vary among data sets and publication dates ^{[3] [4]}.

4. How period choice and geographic unit change results

Reports that compare city‑proper rates (e.g., St. Louis or Baltimore) will differ from county or metro analyses (e.g., Cook County or Los Angeles County) because counties can contain many jurisdictions with distinct crime profiles. USAFacts notes county‑level totals to approximate city patterns but warns this is inexact and changes rankings ^[7]. The Global Statistics and SafeHome compilations use yet another set of cities and time slices, producing different “top five” outcomes ^{[1] [8]}.

5. Recent notable movement: declines in some headline cities

Major city reporting through 2025 shows sharp declines in homicides in several places that were focal points of 2020–2022 concerns: Axios highlights dramatic drops in D.C., Memphis, Chicago and Portland in early‑to‑mid 2025, and CCJ emphasizes that big declines in a few high‑level cities substantially pulled down the sample’s overall homicide rate ^{[9] [2]}. These shifts mean a city that ranked high in 2023 could fall in 2024–2025 rankings.

6. Methodological caveats journalists and policymakers should watch

Homicide counts are typically reliable, but rates per 100,000 depend on up‑to‑date population estimates; some reports substitute alternate population sources when Census figures aren’t yet available ^[10]. Advocacy groups and news maps may not have full or uniform 2024 reporting for all cities, which biases comparisons ^[6]. CCJ explicitly cautions that broad trends are driven by a few cities, so national headline declines mask local variation ^[5].

7. Bottom line for readers seeking a “top five”

If you want a current, reproducible top‑five by homicide rate, choose: (a) the exact year/date window, (b) whether you mean city‑proper, county, or metro, and (c) a single data source (FBI, CCJ sample, local police totals, or independent trackers). Based on the supplied sources, expect St. Louis, Baltimore and New Orleans to appear near the top in many 2024–2025 compilations, but CCJ and other reporting stress that several of those high‑rate cities have seen notable reductions through mid‑2025 ^{[3] [2] [4]}.

Limitations: available sources do not publish a single agreed‑upon “top five” list for the exact timeframe you did not specify; the pieces above provide trend context and recurring high‑rate candidates but differ in methods and scope ^{[2] [3] [4]}.