The Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) recently released data showing declines in 11 out of 13 areas of violent crime across 40 major American cities. Notably, the homicide rate in these cities dropped 21% from 2024 to 2025, building on a 17% decline from the prior year. After a sharp spike during Covid, the homicide rate in these cities has been trending downwards since 2023 and is continuing a longer-term decline. The 2025 homicide rate in these major US cities is the lowest since 1900. The study notes that it does not have enough information to conclusively point to the causal factors driving the decline, although the White House has been quick to take credit.

Comparing Sydney, Australia’s largest city, with these US cities, a few things stand out. The overall homicide rate has followed a similar downward trend over the past 20 years, but Sydney did not see the same spike during Covid that was seen in US cities. The bump in 2024 was due to a terror attack at a shopping mall in Bondi Junction, killing six. The overall homicide rate for Sydney is usually less than a third of that in the US cities included in the CCJ report.

One major factor is stricter gun control laws, enacted after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. Research shows that Australia as a whole has a gun murder rate 6,000% lower than in the United States. It is important to note that the NSW reporting cycle goes from October of the prior year through September of the reporting year. This means that the Bondi Beach terror attack from December 2025 will not be included until the 2026 reporting. Fifteen people were killed in the attack, which would add about one additional homicide per 100,000 people in Sydney for the year when it is reported. Similar to trends seen in the United States after mass shootings, applications for gun licences increased sharply after the Bondi attack, however government was also quick to act, passing new gun control laws five weeks after the incident.

The cause of the decline of both US and Australian homicide rates remains a topic of debate. Some statistics during the Covid era remain anomalies, including the fact that guns killed more children than vehicle accidents for the first time in the United States. As the CCJ points out, more research is needed to understand the causal factors behind these numbers. With a broader evidence base, there can be a greater level of confidence in which policy settings and societal factors make the biggest difference.