Statewide peak of 2,830 crimes per 100,000 came in 2022
The Texas Department of Public Safety’s Uniform Crime Reporting data shows that the state’s overall crime rate — measured as incidents per 100,000 people — peaked at 2,830.14 in 2022 before beginning a steady decline in 2023 that has continued into 2026, state officials confirmed Thursday.
The data, which covers both violent and property offenses aggregated under the FBI’s standardized reporting system, places Texas’s trajectory within a broader national pattern. As MSI reported on July 9, the U.S. murder rate in 2025 reached its lowest point since reliable data collection began in 1960, falling nearly 20% from the previous year. A separate report from the Council on Criminal Justice, published Thursday, found an 18% decline in the homicide rate across 30 U.S. cities from 2025 to the same period in 2026.
In McAllen, a border city in the Rio Grande Valley, the decline has been especially pronounced. City officials highlighted that the city’s current crime rate is its lowest in 40 years, surpassing the ranking in a 2015 study by the financial technology website Smart Asset that listed McAllen as the seventh-safest city in the nation. In 2019, a local theater’s marquee welcomed President Donald Trump to the city with the message “Welcome to McAllen, 7th Safest city in America,” as officials sought to push back against perceptions that border communities were dangerous.
Criminologists have cautioned against attributing the nationwide trend to any single policy or administration, noting that crime rates have exhibited long-term declines punctuated by short-term spikes for decades. The current downturn follows an increase in homicides during 2020 and 2021, a period that coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic and a surge in firearm purchases, according to data previously cited by MSI.
The Texas Department of Public Safety released the Uniform Crime Reporting data on Thursday, documenting a sharp decline in the state’s crime rate since its 2022 peak.