Which red state cities have seen the largest decreases in violent crime rates between 2020 and 2025?
Executive summary
Available mid‑2025 reporting shows violent crime declined in many U.S. cities between 2020 and 2025, with the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) finding drops in several measured offenses across a 42‑city panel and homicide totals down in 2025 compared with recent peaks [1] [2]. Public summaries and national analyses highlight steep mid‑2025 declines in homicides and violent offenses in many large cities — but the assembled sources do not provide a single ranked list of “red state” cities with the largest five‑year drops; that specific query is not answered directly in the available reporting [1] [2].
1. What the main datasets say about 2020–2025 trends
The nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice updated a multi‑city series through June 2025 and reports violent crimes and several serious offenses have fallen in many of the 42 cities it tracks; homicides and gun assaults, among others, were lower in the first half of 2025 than in recent years [1] [2]. Independent summaries — including Stateline’s reporting on the CCJ release — emphasize a continuation of the decline that began in 2022 and pronounced drops in homicides and carjackings in the first half of 2025 [2].
2. Red states vs. blue states: context and competing takes
Several outlets note that many high‑homicide cities are located in GOP‑led states, and one Axios analysis found that a plurality of the most violent cities by homicide rate were in Republican‑run states [3] [4]. Other reporting pushes back: national declines are driven largely by large cities (often blue) and some high‑profile blue‑state cities have seen sharp decreases too — for example, reporting shows Baltimore’s homicide rate fell roughly 40% since 2020 and Chicago posted a major drop in overall violent crime in 2025 [5] [6]. The sources therefore present competing narratives: one emphasizing that many of the worst city homicide rates sit in red states [3] [4], and another showing broad mid‑2025 improvements across jurisdictions of differing partisan control [1] [2].
3. Why a direct answer — “largest decreases in red state cities 2020–2025” — is missing
The CCJ brief and related stories report percent changes in violent offenses for a panel of cities through June 2025, but the released summaries and media pieces in the provided collection do not extract or tabulate a list specifically ranking red‑state cities by 2020–2025 decline; therefore a precise ranked list from these sources cannot be produced here [1] [2]. The FBI Crime Data Explorer and other local FBI/municipal data are referenced broadly but are not delivered in the supplied results in a form that yields the requested multi‑year, city‑by‑city, partisan classification comparison [7] [1].
4. Examples reporters cite of notable declines (but not limited to red states)
Journalists point to steep reductions in homicides and violent crime in several large cities during 2024–2025: Stateline and CCJ note homicide declines [2]; The Guardian and Axios describe Baltimore’s ~40% homicide reduction since 2020 and Chicago’s 22.1% drop in violent crime in the first nine months of 2025 respectively [5] [6]. These examples show sizable decreases in specific cities but are not framed in the sources as a systematic “red‑state cities largest declines” ranking [5] [6].
5. How to get the exact answer you asked for
To identify which red‑state cities saw the largest violent‑crime declines from 2020 through 2025 you need city‑level year‑by‑year offense counts or rates (preferably from consistent municipal or FBI UCR/CDE releases) and a defined list of which cities you classify as “red state” vs. “blue state.” The CCJ dataset covers 42 cities through June 2025 and would be a logical starting point, but the CCJ release in our sources does not supply a precomputed red‑state ranking — researchers must extract city percent changes from CCJ or FBI CDE and then filter by state partisan control to produce the list [1] [7] [2].
6. Caveats and editorial perspective
Be wary of politically framed summaries: multiple sources show partisan spin around crime trends — some highlight high homicide rates concentrated in red states [3] [4], while CCJ and other analyses emphasize nationwide declines in many cities regardless of party [1] [2]. The peer‑reviewed evidence cited in broader coverage shows mayoral partisanship is not a reliable causal predictor of municipal crime trends, and aggregated state figures can obscure large intra‑state city variation [8]. Any definitive ranking should disclose the data window, offenses included, population adjustments, and how “red state” is defined.
Available sources do not mention a prebuilt ranked list of red‑state cities with the largest 2020–2025 violent‑crime decreases; the CCJ city panel and FBI data are the authoritative inputs to construct that list if you’d like me to assemble it from those datasets [1] [7].