For more than 35 years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has surveyed American high school students every two years about their health and behavior.

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey, established in 1991, draws a nationally representative sample of students in grades 9 through 12 at public and private schools. Over the years, it has tracked a broad range of issues affecting teenagers, from substance use and sexual behavior to violence, mental health and other health risks.

But the CDC’s latest national report, a full-color publication with photos, graphics and high school success stories, offers a markedly different portrait of adolescent health than the one it published two years ago.

The 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey report focuses on five areas — diet, physical activity, sleep, digital behavior, and mental health and suicide risk — while largely leaving out national findings on substance use, sexual behavior, violence and disparities among student groups that were prominent in previous reports. 

The underlying survey data on the CDC’s website still contains many of those measures, including trends in alcohol and drug use, and sexual activity, but they are not part of the national report’s key findings.

The shift comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Trump administration have made preventing childhood chronic disease and promoting nutrition, physical activity and other health behaviors central to their “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, agenda. Kennedy also chairs the presidential MAHA Commission, which has focused on the root causes of childhood chronic disease.

The 2025 report is also substantially shorter than the CDC’s previous national Youth Risk Behavior Survey report. It runs 36 pages, including the title page, table of contents and references, compared with 88 pages for the 2023 report, which also included some technical notes, references and appendices.

Dr. Jennifer Shuford, CDC’s deputy director and chief medical officer, touted changes in student attitudes toward nutrition, physical activity and mental health. 

“These are meaningful improvements, and they show that progress is possible when schools, families, and communities work together to support young people,” she said in a news release. 

“At the same time, too many students are still struggling with daily health behaviors that can negatively affect their long-term health,” Shuford said.

A focus on health and wellness

The 2025 report provides a snapshot of high school students’ health in 2025 and compares changes over the previous two and 10 years. Its five focus areas reflect behaviors and experiences the CDC says affect adolescent health now and into adulthood.

Some of the findings are encouraging. Thirty-nine percent of high school students said they ate fruit daily in 2025, up from 33% in 2023 and 34% in 2015. Sixty-three percent ate vegetables daily, compared with 58% in 2023 and 61% in 2015.

The share who said they drank plain water at least three times a day rose to 58% in 2025, up from 56% in 2021 and 49% in 2015, while daily soda consumption fell to 17% from 20% in 2015.

The share of students who played on a sports team also increased, reaching 58% in 2025 compared with 52% in 2023 and 49% in 2021.

Several measures of mental health and suicide risk improved as well. The share of students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness fell to 33% in 2025, from 40% in 2023 and 42% in 2021. It was 30% in 2015.

The share who seriously considered attempting suicide fell from 22% in 2021 to 14% in 2025, while the share who made a suicide plan fell from a high of 18% in 2021 to 12% in 2025.

Female students continued to report higher rates of mental health and suicide risk than male students. In 2025, 43% of female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, compared with 24% of male students.

But the report also shows that several measures of youth health have worsened over the longer term.

Just 25% of high school students were physically active for at least 60 minutes a day in 2025, unchanged from 2023 and down from 27% in 2015. Twenty-four percent got at least eight hours of sleep on an average school night, compared with 27% in 2015.

Daily breakfast consumption fell from 36% in 2015 to 27% in 2025. The report also found long-term declines in daily physical activity, muscle-strengthening activity and daily physical education.

About 36% of students said they used social media every hour or more in 2025, little changed from 37% in 2023.

A different look at adolescent health

The latest report’s focus marks a significant change from the CDC’s 2023 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey report.

That report, published during the Biden administration and as the country was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, was organized around sexual behavior, substance use, experiences of violence, mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. It also examined emerging issues including parental monitoring, social media use, racism in schools, unfair school discipline, school connectedness and unstable housing.

The 2023 report included more student demographic data broken down by sex, race and ethnicity, and sexual and gender identity. For the first time, the national survey asked students whether they identified as transgender, and the report highlighted disparities affecting LGBTQ+ students and marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

The 2025 report does not mention LGBTQ+ students or sexual and gender identity. It also provides fewer detailed demographic comparisons. The CDC says the new report includes only selected statistically significant demographic differences, while the underlying survey data remain available through the agency’s data system.

The new public-facing report does not mean the CDC stopped collecting underlying information about many of the issues featured in previous youth risk behavior reports. The agency continues to make the national dataset available publicly, including demographic information, through its online data tools.

Instead, the change is in how the CDC presents the findings nationally. That produces a different portrait of the nation’s high school students — one that captures some notable improvements while giving considerably less attention to several categories of health and risk that have been prominent in the CDC’s national youth surveillance reports for years.

Declines in substance use

For example, the decline in teen substance use that has unfolded over decades is absent from this year’s report, despite the 2025 data showing alcohol and marijuana use at or near historic lows.

About 20% of high school students reported current alcohol use in 2025, down from 22% in 2023 and nearly 52% in 1995. Current marijuana use also fell to about 13% in 2025, from 17% in 2023, while the share who had ever used marijuana dropped to about 25% in 2025 from 42% in 1995.

The share of students who had ever used other illicit drugs, including cocaine, inhalants, heroin, methamphetamines, ecstasy or hallucinogens, was 9.7% in 2025, essentially unchanged from 9.9% in 2023 and about 13% in 2015.

Vaping also continued its long-term decline. Current e-cigarette or vape use fell to 16% in 2025 from a high of nearly 33% in 2019. The share of students who had ever used these products also fell to 30% in 2025 from about 34% in 2023 and about 45% in 2015.

Sexual activity and school violence

The new report also gives little attention to several measures that have long been part of the CDC’s youth survey, including sexual activity and violence at school.

The share of high school students who reported being currently sexually active fell to about 19% in 2025, down from nearly 21% in 2023 and nearly 40% in 1995.

Other measures show longer-term declines but less consistent changes. The share of students who reported carrying a weapon on school property fell to about 3% in 2025, from more than 4% in 2023 and almost 10% in 1995.

The share who said they had been threatened or injured with a weapon, such as a gun or knife, at school was about 8% in 2025, compared with 9% in 2023 and about 8% in 1995. Bullying on school property was reported by 19.7% of students in 2025, roughly unchanged from 19.2% in 2023 and about 20% in 2015. Reported bullying hit a low of 15% in 2021.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Students ages 12 to 18 experienced higher rates of reported crime at school than away from school in 2024, according to a new federal analysis. But the overall rate of crime victimization at school has not changed significantly since 2014.

The rate of total victimization, including theft and nonfatal violent crimes such as robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault, was 27 per 1,000 students at school in 2024, compared with 17.7 per 1,000 away from school, according to a new federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report released this month.

The findings come as school safety remains a chief concern among educators, students, parents and policymakers nationwide, with ongoing attention to violence, discipline and shootings.

The report’s findings are based on the National Crime Victimization Survey, an annual survey in which people report crimes they experienced. The survey measures crimes that occurred during the six months before respondents were interviewed, and crimes are classified by the year of the survey rather than the year they occurred. The 2024 survey covered crimes experienced from July 2023 through November 2024.

These figures capture a different aspect of school safety than administrative crime or discipline data because the survey measures victimization reported by respondents, rather than all crimes known to police or school officials.

The report also defines victimization “at school” broadly, including crimes that occurred inside school buildings, on school property, on school buses or while students were going to or from school.

There was no significant change in the overall rate of crime victimization at school between 2014 and 2024, or between 2023 and 2024, according to the report. The same was true for the overall rate away from school.

But the data showed a notable change from the previous year in reported nonfatal violent victimization at school. That rate rose from 14.2 per 1,000 students in 2023 to 21.8 per 1,000 in 2024. The report’s authors, however, did not find a significant change in the rate of nonfatal violent victimization at school in the decade between 2014 and 2024.

Simple assault accounted for much of the nonfatal violent victimization measured in the survey. When simple assault was excluded, the rate of violent victimization at school was 5.8 per 1,000 students in 2024 — a rate that did not differ significantly from 2014 or 2023.

Meanwhile, theft victimization at school declined over the longer term, falling from 14.1 per 1,000 students in 2014 to 5.2 per 1,000 in 2024. Away from school, the theft rate fell from 11.2 to 5.1 per 1,000 over the same period.

Differences among students

The report also found differences in victimization rates based on where students lived and their household income, though many demographic differences were not statistically significant.

Students in suburban areas had a higher rate of total victimization at school in 2024 — 31.5 per 1,000 — than students in rural areas, whose rate was 11 per 1,000. 

Students in urban areas had a victimization rate of 27 per 1,000 in 2024, though the authors cautioned that the estimate is less reliable because it was based on a small number of cases.

Students living in households earning less than $25,000 annually had the highest rate of total victimization at school, at 60.3 per 1,000. The rate was 26.7 per 1,000 among students in households earning $25,000 to $49,999, 28.4 per 1,000 among those earning $50,000 to $99,999, and 18.9 per 1,000 among those earning $100,000 or more — the lowest rate among the income groups.

The report found no statistically significant differences in total victimization at school by students’ race or Hispanic origin. Nor were there significant differences between male and female students in rates of victimization at school across the types of crime measured.

Away from school, however, female students experienced a higher rate of total victimization than male students: 23.5 per 1,000 compared with 12.2 per 1,000.

Age differences were limited as well. The overall rate of victimization at school did not differ significantly between students ages 12 to 14 and those ages 15 to 18.

Younger students did have a higher rate of theft victimization at school: 7.5 per 1,000, compared with 3 per 1,000 among students ages 15 to 18.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Twenty-five years after 9/11, the surveillance infrastructure built and expanded in its aftermath has become part of a far larger digital ecosystem — producing tools that can collect and analyze information on a scale unimaginable in 2001.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, did more than reshape the nation’s approach to terrorism. They changed the architecture of American intelligence and policing. They expanded how government agencies collect, share and analyze information, and brought national security tools deeper into ordinary law enforcement.

The infrastructure built in the attacks’ aftermath has proved remarkably durable. Joint terrorism task forces and fusion centers brought federal, state and local agencies into closer intelligence-sharing networks. New laws expanded the government’s ability to obtain information. And police departments acquired technologies that once belonged largely to the realm of national security.

But the expansion of surveillance did not go uncontested. Civil liberties groups warned that the new powers could erode Americans’ privacy and constitutional protections, while many Americans accepted expanded government surveillance as a necessary tradeoff for safety in the aftermath of the attacks. 

The country also entered a period of heightened scrutiny for people perceived as foreign or potentially threatening — with American Muslims and immigrant communities bearing a particularly heavy burden.

Then came the digital revolution.

Americans began carrying smartphones, broadcasting their lives on social media and generating enormous amounts of commercially collected data. Police gained access to license plate readers, networks of cameras, cellphone location information and other technologies capable of tracking people and mapping their movements.

Now, artificial intelligence is adding another layer: systems that can sift through those vast stores of information, connect previously separate databases and generate analyses in seconds.

Some surveillance and privacy experts say that the amount of information available to the government — and its ability to make sense of it — has fundamentally changed since 9/11. 

That has taken on new urgency as surveillance systems have moved further into everyday life. Automated license plate readers can track where people drive. Facial recognition can help identify people in crowds. Commercial data can reveal where and how people live and travel. And increasingly, artificial intelligence can analyze and connect these streams of information at a speed no human investigator could match. 

Those capabilities have raised concerns among some experts and advocates about how surveillance could be used to monitor protests, track immigrants and identify people seeking reproductive healthcare.

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the security and surveillance project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, described the post-9/11 era as a “perfect storm.”

“That storm is both the expansion of the legal powers that have been conferred on the government to collect and share information, combined with the advance of technology, which has given the government more tools to collect information from more people in more contexts,” Nojeim said.

From intelligence silos to everyday policing

In the months after 9/11, officials sought to fix a critical weakness exposed by the attacks: Intelligence that could have helped uncover the plot was held across government agencies that failed to connect or share it effectively. The response was a sweeping effort to tear down those silos and build a more integrated intelligence network.

Federal, state and local agencies quickly expanded intelligence-sharing, and the government established and expanded networks designed to move information across traditional institutional boundaries. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces brought together federal, state and local law enforcement and intelligence personnel. 

Fusion centers, generally run by state and local governments with federal support, became another part of the post-9/11 intelligence architecture, with at least one operating in every state. The centers serve as intelligence hubs where law enforcement agencies can share information, analyze data and flag potential threats across jurisdictions.

Katie Kinsey, chief of staff and tech policy counsel at the Policing Project at the NYU School of Law, said the original goal was straightforward — prevent another terrorist attack.

Over time, some fusion centers began supporting investigations and enforcement involving lower-level crimes, Kinsey said. Local police departments also developed their own versions of centralized intelligence hubs, often called real-time crime centers, that can integrate information from cameras, automated license plate readers and other surveillance systems.

David Viola, an adjunct professor at the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of “You Have Unleashed a Storm: New York City’s Descent into Chaos During America’s Most Explosive Era of Radical Violence,” said the post-9/11 period also marked a major shift in the kind of information available to investigators. 

Before the attacks, he said, intelligence work relied heavily on traditional investigative techniques. Today, digital records can provide information about where people go, with whom they communicate, what they purchase and what they post online.

But technology is only part of the transformation. Viola said the institutional relationships forged among local, state and federal authorities after 9/11 are among the period’s most lasting legacies.

“These are institutions that have cemented the close coordination between state, local, federal, tribal authorities in the past 25 years, and they’re going nowhere, for better or worse,” he said.

Nojeim, of the Center for Democracy & Technology, was directing lobbyists in Washington, D.C., on 9/11. His office was evacuated as officials tried to determine whether the U.S. Capitol was the target of another hijacked plane.

In the aftermath, he said, civil liberties advocates understood that decisions made in response to the attacks could extend far beyond the immediate crisis. 

About a month after the attacks, the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law, dramatically expanding the federal government’s ability to collect information and conduct surveillance in terrorism investigations. Some of its most sweeping surveillance authorities were later curtailed or allowed to expire, but the law helped establish a new framework for national security surveillance that continues to shape how Americans’ data is collected and monitored.

“In the days after 9/11, we all realized that what the government did in the next few days to respond could have lasting implications for the civil liberties of Americans,” Nojeim said.

The data economy

The growth of surveillance after 9/11 also coincided with a separate transformation that would make those systems far more powerful. Americans were beginning to carry smartphones, use social media and spend more of their lives online, generating enormous amounts of digital information that did not exist before.

Kinsey, of the Policing Project, said that created a new dynamic for law enforcement. Agencies had expanded their ability to collect and share intelligence after 9/11, while technology was producing more information about people than ever before. Much of that information was collected by private companies for commercial purposes, but it could also become available to law enforcement, either through data purchases or when companies turned information over to authorities.

At the same time, Kinsey said, Americans have become accustomed to giving up personal information without necessarily understanding how it is collected or what can ultimately be done with it.

“There’s still a lack of awareness because there’s a lack of transparency on the part of law enforcement, but also on the part of these private tech companies about what they are actually collecting on us, and then what they’re doing with that information,” Kinsey said.

That lack of visibility extends beyond the cameras and other surveillance tools people can see. Personal data can be combined and shared behind the scenes, allowing the government to draw conclusions from pieces of information that may seem insignificant on their own.

“Never in human history has the government had more information about what we are doing, who we are doing it with, what we like to buy, and indeed what we are thinking about, than ever before,” said Nojeim, of the Center for Democracy & Technology.

Jessica Katzenstein, a cultural anthropologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University, said technological advances have also changed what Americans consider normal, making forms of live, mass surveillance that once seemed dystopian increasingly commonplace.

“The things that we would have taken for granted as forms of privacy we can all expect have just completely vanished,” she said.

That normalization can make surveillance difficult to roll back once law enforcement agencies have invested in the technology and incorporated it into their work, she said.

“Once you have a sense of both a need and access to tools, it will be very, very difficult to get you to give that up,” said Katzenstein, who also studies police in the U.S. as an ethnographer.

Communities living with the consequences

The expansion of surveillance after 9/11 also had consequences that were not felt equally. American Muslims faced heightened scrutiny in the name of national security, and advocates say the surveillance practices and assumptions that emerged in that period have since affected other communities of color.

Haris Tarin, vice president of policy and programming for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who also spent more than a decade working in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said many American Muslims experienced the aftermath of 9/11 as a “dual attack.”

“We were attacked twice. First by the terrorists, we were attacked for being Americans, and then we were attacked by our own government and people within our own country, where we were cast under suspicion, and that has continued for the last 25 years,” Tarin said.

Tarin said that suspicion soon extended beyond American Muslims to other communities.

“After 9/11, American Muslims were easy to go after because there was not much political consequence,” he said. “But it just didn’t stop with American Muslims. We’ve seen that now extend to immigrants. We’ve seen that now extend to anti-Semitism. We’ve seen that now extend to anti-Black hate.”

Lia Nitake, senior director of technology, telecommunications and media policy at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said the consequences have been particularly pronounced for communities of color. She said the heightened surveillance of people based on their race, religion or other aspects of their identity has created a climate of fear.

“In a lot of ways, these surveillance measures have also eroded this idea that everyone should have an equal right to privacy,” Nitake said. 

Both Tarin and Nitake said the growing use of artificial intelligence raises new concerns about how those disparities could be reproduced or amplified. Police agencies could increasingly rely on technology to monitor communities rather than invest in relationships with them, Tarin said.

“In the AI age, it will be easy for government agencies and law enforcement agencies to use technology to surveil and not do the hard work of community policing and engaging communities,” he said.

Stronger surveillance systems

Police departments nationwide are already using AI-assisted tools to analyze evidence, search databases, draft reports and translate conversations in real time.

North Carolina Central University Police Chief Robert Gaddy, who previously served as a Durham police officer for more than 25 years, sees the technology as a practical response to the growing demands on modern policing.

Information that once had to be gathered and shared manually can now flow through centralized digital systems, while AI-assisted cameras and license plate readers help officers identify suspects, gather evidence and solve crimes.

“If I can take this technology and at least give that (victim’s) security back to them by solving this crime, it’s worth every every bit of it,” Gaddy said.

Gaddy said technology can also help departments facing staffing shortages. But he said its use requires clear limits and oversight, including rules governing how officers access and share information and audits to identify potential misuse.

Still, some experts and advocates worry that newer AI-assisted systems could make existing surveillance infrastructure significantly more powerful by connecting databases that previously operated separately. Some tools allow officers to search multiple databases using natural-language prompts and generate summaries, raising questions about accuracy, missing information and how much officers may rely on the results.

Nojeim, of the Center on Democracy & Technology, said those concerns become especially serious when AI is used in decisions that can affect someone’s liberty.

“We all know from our work or our play with AI that it can make mistakes and that it hallucinates,” he said. “Now we’re in a world where an AI hallucination can be the thing that set off an investigation that landed you in jail inappropriately.”

Modern law enforcement agencies have access to more information than any human could reasonably process, said Viola, the adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. AI could help investigators identify connections that might otherwise be missed. But Viola said those capabilities also come with risks.

“These are very capable tools that can be used to great effect for the betterment of American society and safety,” Viola said. “They can also be used for ill effect if there is an administration who wants to use them for such activity.”

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Women on parole report higher rates of housing instability, poor health and serious mental health and substance use disorders than men on parole and women who weren’t on parole, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice.

For people leaving prison, parole is a period of transition that can involve finding housing and work, reconnecting with family and accessing health care while also meeting the conditions of supervision. How well those pieces come together can shape whether someone successfully settles back into the community — a key part, some argue, of reducing future involvement with the criminal justice system and promoting public safety.

The council’s latest report examined nationally representative 2021-2023 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, comparing women who reported being on parole both with women who were not on parole and with men who were on parole.

About 13% of women on parole reported moving three or more times in the previous year, compared with 2% of women who were not on parole and 6% of men on parole, according to the analysis.

Women on parole also were more likely to report poor health. About 29% rated their overall health as fair or poor, compared with 16% of women not on parole and 17% of men on parole.

About 24% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe mental health disorder, compared with 7% of women not on parole and 10% of men on parole, according to the council’s report. About 25% of women on parole also reported experiencing a major depressive episode during the previous year, compared with 10% of women not on parole and 12% of men on parole.

The analysis found that substance use disorders were common among people on parole, but severe disorders were more prevalent among women. About 32% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe substance use disorder, compared with 24% of men on parole and 3% of women not on parole.

The disparity was especially large for opioid use. About 18% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe opioid use disorder, compared with 5% of men on parole and 0.4% of women not on parole.

Health and housing can make the demands of reentry harder to manage, including maintaining employment, attending treatment and supervision appointments, and managing family responsibilities, according to the report.

Women on parole also were more likely than men on parole to report living in a household with minor children. About 29% of women on parole lived in a household with at least one child under 18, compared with 19% of men on parole and 30% of women who were not on parole.

The survey, however, did not indicate whether respondents were parents, caregivers or financially responsible for the children, according to the report.

Health insurance coverage also differed among the groups. About 11% of women on parole reported being uninsured, compared with 7% of women not on parole and 20% of men on parole, according to the analysis.

The report’s authors wrote that the findings point to the need for reentry planning that goes beyond supervision requirements to address housing, health care, mental health and substance use treatment and family responsibilities. The authors could not determine whether the conditions preceded or resulted from criminal justice involvement, but the findings strongly suggest women on parole face distinct reentry challenges.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Violent crime in the United States fell by an estimated 9.3% in 2025, marking the largest year-to-year decline in the national violent crime rate since the FBI began estimating crime in 1936, according to new national data.

The estimated murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate also fell 18.1%, to 4.1 killings per 100,000 people — tying the lowest rate recorded since national estimates began. The rate matches those recorded in 1955 and 1956, according to the FBI.

The decline across major crime categories was broad. The estimated robbery rate fell 18.5%, aggravated assault fell 7.2% and rape fell 7.6%. Property crime also dropped sharply, declining 12.4% from 2024. Motor vehicle theft fell 22.7%, while burglary declined 15.8%.

The FBI’s figures are based on reports of crimes submitted by law enforcement agencies, meaning they do not capture offenses that aren’t reported to police. Participation in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program is voluntary, and agencies submit their data either through state programs or directly to the FBI. 

In 2025, 17,075 law enforcement agencies submitted data, covering 96.2% of the U.S. population. Every city agency with populations over a million submitted a full year of data. 

Crime statistics can be affected by changes in reporting practices and public willingness to report crimes, particularly as trust in law enforcement and government institutions varies.

An estimated 1.12 million violent crimes occurred nationwide in 2025, with the violent crime rate falling from 362.9 offenses per 100,000 people in 2024, to 327.6 per 100,000 in 2025.

The findings largely align with other recent estimates. The nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice, which analyzed crime trends in 40 large U.S. cities, found that 11 of 13 offenses it tracked, including homicide, declined in 2025. 

The sharp drop in homicides has persisted in 2026. Data analyzed by the council shows killings continued to decline through June across the cities it tracks, putting the nation on pace for another historic low.

“The homicide drop is historic and crystal clear. But right now, what’s driving it is about as clear as a glass of milk,” Adam Gelb, the council’s president and CEO, said in a statement. 

“Rates are falling in cities with very different public safety strategies, economic conditions, and political leadership,” Gelb said. “The consistency across the map should make us cautious about handing credit to any one leader, party, policy, or program before the evidence catches up.”  

Experts say it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what is driving the declines. Researchers have pointed to a range of possible factors, including the normalization of social activity after the pandemic, changes in policing and violence-prevention strategies, demographic shifts and the unwinding of the factors that contributed to the pandemic-era crime surge.

The declines also began before President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, making it difficult to attribute the national trend to policies implemented by his administration.

Cities with populations between 500,000 and 999,999 recorded the largest drop in violent crime, at 15.3%, according to the FBI. Smaller cities also saw double digit declines in overall violent crime. 

Nonmetropolitan counties saw violent crime decline 6%, the smallest decrease among the population groups analyzed. No population group recorded an overall increase in violent crime. 

Cities with populations over 1 million saw a 1.2% increase in rape between 2024 and 2025, the only increase in a specific violent crime among the population groups.

The data shows continued declines in several crimes that had surged in recent years. The estimated motor vehicle theft rate fell to 197 per 100,000 people in 2025, a 23% decrease from 2024 and a 38.8% decline from its 2023 peak. The robbery rate, at 49.4 per 100,000, was the lowest estimated rate in 20 years. Burglary and larceny-theft rates also reached 20-year lows.

The FBI reported declines in arrests of juveniles as well. The number of people under 18 arrested for violent crimes fell 5% in 2025, from 39,117 to 37,156, while juvenile arrests for property crimes fell 12.2%, from 77,779 to 68,281. 

By comparison, adult violent-crime arrests fell 1.7%, and adult property-crime arrests fell 3.8%.

Despite the decline in reported crime, law enforcement cleared less than half of reported violent crimes in 2025. Agencies cleared 47.4% of reported violent crimes through an arrest or exceptional means, while just 17.4% of reported property crimes were cleared.

Some crime rates also remain higher than before the pandemic. The 2025 aggravated assault rate of 238 offenses per 100,000 people, for example, was lower than recent years but remained higher than every year from 2013 through 2015.

The FBI said preliminary data indicate crime continued to decline during the first half of 2026. Compared with the same period in 2025, violent crime was down 10.6%, while murder and nonnegligent manslaughter fell 23%, rape fell 18.6%, robbery fell 19.6% and aggravated assault fell 7.2%.

The latest national figures provide the most comprehensive accounting yet of the sharp decline in crime that followed the pandemic-era surge. The FBI’s 2025 murder rate of 4.1 per 100,000 compares with a recent high of 6.6 in both 2020 and 2022.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Families who believe local officials prematurely ruled their loved ones’ deaths suicides or accidents — rather than investigating whether domestic violence played a role — are pushing lawmakers in a growing number of states to require additional scrutiny.

Advocates call the deaths “hidden homicides” — killings they say may be staged to look like suicides, overdoses or accidents and then overlooked by investigators. Some advocates argue that requiring additional investigative steps could prevent potential evidence from being lost before a case is closed.

This year, lawmakers in at least five states — Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Oregon — have considered legislation aimed at identifying homicides or unexplained deaths involving domestic violence that might otherwise be misclassified. All of the bills have stalled in legislative committees amid concerns over financial and administrative constraints, including requirements for law enforcement training. 

California in 2024 became the first state to enact a law addressing the issue when lawmakers approved Joanna’s Law, or Senate Bill 989, which took effect last year. The law requires police officers, in certain cases, to interview family members before determining the manner and cause of death and allows families to request a complete autopsy when specific indicators of domestic homicide are present.

The law was inspired by the death of Joanna Lewis, whose family argued her death had been misclassified as a suicide. She had previously sought restraining orders against her husband, Mark Lewis, accusing him of domestic violence.

Alliance for HOPE International, an anti-domestic violence advocacy organization that helped develop the legislation, said that case reflects broader concerns about how suspicious deaths involving intimate partner violence are investigated nationwide. 

The group has also helped families conduct independent investigations into their loved ones’ deaths. 

“We’ve come across some tremendous obstacles and have felt the pain and the frustration that family members have gone through,” said Gael Strack, co-founder of Alliance for HOPE International. 

The group would also like to help introduce similar legislation in Alaska, Arizona and Nevada.

Advocates acknowledge that not every suspicious death involving domestic violence is a homicide, but argue certain circumstances should prompt investigators to slow down and ask additional questions.

“In many of our cases, they make a conclusion on the manner of death within 30 minutes of arriving at the scene. They don’t know anything about the family, the relationship, the history,” said Casey Gwinn, co-founder of Alliance for HOPE International.

Advocates point to several reasons they believe deaths can be misclassified, including the limited number of autopsies, inconsistent death investigation practices and a lack of coordination among law enforcement, medical examiners, prosecutors and domestic violence experts.

In many cases, advocates say, a death that appears to be a suicide is treated differently than a homicide investigation — meaning investigators may not conduct the same level of scene analysis, interviews or evidence collection.

Families seeking answers also often face additional hurdles after a death is classified as a suicide or accident, some advocates say. They may struggle with obtaining police records, challenging a medical examiner’s findings or commissioning an independent investigation. 

Among those pushing for legislation is Kellee Harris of Oregon, whose daughter, Kelsey Harris, was found dead in her Linn County home in 2021 a week after she had reported that her boyfriend had strangled her.

Local authorities ruled Kelsey’s death a suicide. Harris says investigators failed to fully consider the circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death, including the recent strangulation report and the history of abuse she says occurred in the relationship.

“I just think that they wanted me to go away,” Harris told Stateline, referring to local authorities. “It’s real easy to slap a suicide determination on on a death, and then they don’t have to do anything else.”

Linn County Sheriff Michelle Duncan told Stateline that her office stands by its determination that Kelsey died by suicide.

Oregon lawmakers are now working to revive a proposal that stalled during this year’s legislative session. Democratic state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the original version of the legislation needed revisions after medical examiners and law enforcement raised concerns about its scope and cost.

The earlier proposal was interpreted by some stakeholders as requiring significantly more autopsies, leading to concerns about the financial impact. Gelser Blouin said the next version, which she plans to introduce next year, will take a narrower approach. She plans to update the bill’s language to more explicitly require additional evaluation in certain domestic violence-related deaths rather than automatically requiring an autopsy.

Those additional steps could include further documentation, toxicology testing, additional imaging or interviews before investigators determine the manner of death. Her goal, she said, is to make the death investigation process in the state more transparent in hopes of helping people find some sense of closure.

“People want to do this, and they want to get it right. They don’t want us to pass a law that can’t be implemented because it’s too confusing or that makes it worse,” Gelser Blouin said.

Duncan, the Linn County sheriff, said she generally supports efforts to strengthen Oregon’s death investigation system and said she would like to see more autopsies completed.

But Duncan said she has concerns about making certain investigative steps mandatory in every case, such as requiring law enforcement to contact family members, because sometimes investigators are unable to locate next of kin.

“There’s often people that we just can’t even find family for,” she said.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

For more than three decades, researchers have been tracking ticks, mice, oak trees and other wildlife in a New York forest to better understand what makes Lyme disease more likely to spread.

Their latest findings challenge some long-held assumptions — including the idea that deer are a major driver of Lyme disease risk.

Researchers at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, a nonprofit environmental research group, found that white-footed mice, not white-tailed deer, are closely linked to the number of young blacklegged ticks, the life stage most likely to infect people with Lyme disease.

A year with a large mouse population was followed by about a 40% increase in nymphal ticks the following year. But more mice don’t necessarily mean a higher percentage of ticks carrying Lyme bacteria. Researchers initially expected the two to rise together because white-footed mice are especially good at transmitting the bacteria to ticks.

The researchers found that other animals, including skunks, squirrels and opossums, also feed larval ticks. Because those animals are less efficient at transmitting the bacteria, the mix of hosts can affect how many ticks become infected.

In other words, mouse populations can help predict how many ticks there will be, but not necessarily how many will carry Lyme bacteria.

The researchers also found that large crops of acorns can set off a chain reaction: More acorns mean more food for mice, which can mean more ticks two years later.

The findings come as tick-borne diseases are an increasing public health concern. Lyme disease is the most commonly reported tick-borne disease in the United States, with nearly half a million people diagnosed each year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, draws on data collected since 1991 at a 2,000-acre research site in Dutchess County, New York.

The researchers also found that extreme heat and cold don’t necessarily kill blacklegged ticks in the wild. The ticks appear able to shelter in soil and leaf litter during extreme temperatures. The team plans to continue monitoring how ticks, wildlife, trees and climate interact — and what those changes could mean for human health, according to a news release.

This new research comes as scientists and public health officials are also watching ticks expand into new parts of the country.

Lone star ticks, once primarily associated with the Southeast, are now established across much of the South, Midwest and Northeast. An adult female is distinguished by a white dot or “lone star” on her back. The ticks can transmit several diseases and are associated with alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to a molecule found in red meat and other products from mammals.

As lone star tick populations have spread, more states are paying attention to alpha-gal syndrome, which experts believe is significantly underdiagnosed.

Massachusetts, Missouri and Oklahoma have expanded surveillance or public education efforts in recent years, and all three have joined the growing list of states that require alpha-gal syndrome to be reported to public health officials.

At least 14 states have added or will soon add alpha-gal syndrome to their lists of reportable diseases, according to the Alpha-gal Alliance Action Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. In those states, health care providers and laboratories must report cases to state health departments.

Lawmakers in Ohio also are considering a similar measure that would make alpha-gal syndrome a reportable disease. The bill has passed the House and remains under consideration in the Senate. The legislature will adjourn in December.

Unlike Lyme disease, alpha-gal syndrome is not required to be reported nationwide, making it difficult to determine how common the condition is or how its prevalence is changing. The CDC estimates that as many as 450,000 people in the United States may have the disease.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Flock Safety is tightening privacy and oversight controls for its nationwide network of automated license plate readers as more communities pull back from the technology and lawmakers across the political spectrum push for new restrictions.

The company announced Thursday that it will recommend that police agencies retain license plate reader data for seven days, down from 30, while adding tools to restrict data sharing between agencies and detect potentially abusive searches. Flock also plans to require law enforcement users to associate searches with case codes and automatically suspend users whose activity is flagged as abnormal.

The changes come amid growing scrutiny of a surveillance network that Flock says has more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and serves thousands of law enforcement agencies and communities.

The cameras photograph passing vehicles and record information including license plates, vehicle characteristics, location and time. Police can search the resulting data during investigations, sometimes across jurisdictional lines.

More than 50 agencies or communities have canceled, suspended or rejected a Flock contract or deactivated their cameras since the beginning of 2026, according to DeFlock, a grassroots group that tracks license plate reader deployments. Cameras have also been vandalized in communities around the country.

Recent incidents involving police officers accused of using Flock to track friends, relatives and romantic partners have added to concerns about how the data can be accessed and shared. The technology also has been criticized after inaccurate license plate information contributed to wrongful police stops, arrests and detentions.

Flock says the new measures will give communities greater control over their data while strengthening safeguards against misuse.

“These changes, like I said, are the next chapter of a long book I hope to write on how we build a better version of America that’s both safer, protects our privacy and holds those who have power accountable,” Flock Safety co-founder and CEO Garrett Langley said in a video statement.

But civil liberties advocates say some of the safeguards have been tried before and question whether the company’s changes address broader concerns about a system that can create a record of people’s movements even when they are not suspected of a crime.

States have taken different approaches to regulating technologies used in policing, including artificial intelligence, facial recognition, drones and automated license plate readers. More than a dozen states have enacted laws governing such technologies, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, but there is no consistent national framework for their use.

Strengthening privacy and accountability

Flock’s seven-day retention recommendation is one of its most significant changes.

When the company launched nine years ago, it set 30 days as the default recommendation, while allowing communities to choose shorter or longer periods.

For investigations that require older information, Flock is introducing “Evidence Mode,” which will allow detectives to preserve specific license plate data as evidence in an active case.

The change does not automatically apply to existing customers, which can keep their current retention policies. Communities also will continue to choose their own retention periods.

The American Civil Liberties Union called the shorter retention period a potential step forward but said its impact will depend on how the new mode works. In a statement, the group recommended a 48-hour retention period and warned that if searches cause data to be preserved, the new system could allow significant amounts of location information to remain available longer than seven days.

Flock also is giving communities more control over which outside agencies can search their cameras. Under the new “offense filtering” system, a community could allow another agency to search its cameras for specific crimes or offenses and block searches related to immigration enforcement, for example.

Flock also will require all law enforcement customers to adopt its audit assistance tool by the end of the year. The system looks for unusual search activity and flags it for administrator review. Flock plans to automatically suspend users whose activity meets certain criteria for abnormal behavior while their access is reviewed.

The company also will require case codes for law enforcement searches by the end of the year. Officers can bypass the requirement during emergencies, but those searches also will be flagged for review.

Police misuse and erroneous alerts

Flock’s new controls build on safeguards the company has introduced in recent years, including electronic audit logs and requirements that users provide a reason for searches.

The ACLU, in its statement, said some of those earlier safeguards were ineffective. The group pointed to cases in which officers circumvented search-purpose restrictions by entering vague or meaningless explanations before Flock replaced a free-text field with a list of approved search reasons.

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that nearly 50 police officers had been charged or accused of using Flock cameras for unauthorized purposes, many involving attempts to track current or former romantic partners or family members.

In Savannah, Georgia, four police officers and two civilian employees were fired last week after a department investigation found searches involving personal acquaintances and family members, according to a news release. The investigation also found that an officer had allowed an outside law enforcement agency to access Savannah’s Flock system.

The activity was identified using Flock’s audit assistance tool. All six cases were referred to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for independent criminal investigations.

The technology has also drawn scrutiny when information in the system is inaccurate or outdated.

In Wisconsin, a woman was pulled over at gunpoint earlier this month after a Flock camera incorrectly flagged her vehicle as being involved in a homicide. Brookfield police stopped Amber Newell on Interstate 94 after receiving the alert, but Milwaukee police told officers they no longer needed the vehicle or its occupants. Newell was released.

Milwaukee police later said the incident was caused by an employee’s failure to remove an outdated wanted-vehicle alert from the Flock system, rather than an error by Flock itself. Newell said she had also been stopped at gunpoint earlier that week and was afraid to drive afterward.

In its announcement, Flock said its alerts are intended to be investigative leads rather than conclusions and that officers should visually confirm a vehicle’s license plate before taking action. The company said its system produces fewer than nine human-reported errors for every 1 million alerts.

Bipartisan interest

A bipartisan group of Pennsylvania lawmakers announced Monday that they plan to introduce legislation establishing statewide privacy and accountability requirements for automated license plate readers, including Flock cameras.

The proposal would establish rules governing access to the data, documented reasons for searches, audit trails, data retention and transparency. It also would create civil penalties for unauthorized access, use or disclosure and allow people harmed by misuse to bring civil suits.

“Technology that can help keep our communities safe should never become a tool for stalking or abuse,” Democratic state Rep. Jennifer O’Mara said in a statement announcing the proposal.

Republicans in Congress also have introduced or plan to introduce at least two proposals aimed at restricting automated surveillance technology. One would restrict federal agencies from purchasing or using certain automated surveillance technology, while the other would bar state and local police from using federal funds to acquire automated license plate reader systems.

Last month, 15 Democratic lawmakers in Michigan sent a letter to the state Department of Transportation to end an agreement allowing federal agencies, including U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations, to install surveillance technology on state property. The lawmakers argued that automated license plate readers infringe on residents’ constitutional rights.

The West Virginia House Democratic Caucus also released a statement last month opposing Flock cameras and said it is monitoring canceled contracts and lawsuits involving the technology.

Abandoning the technology

Some local governments are going further by ending their relationships with Flock altogether.

DeFlock’s tracker lists dozens of communities that have canceled contracts, deactivated cameras or rejected proposals since 2021.

More than 50 agencies or communities have taken one of those steps since the beginning of 2026.

Several communities in Rhode Island and Nebraska have acted this month, with city leaders voting to cancel contracts or uninstall cameras.

Earlier this month, the Burnet County Sheriff’s Office in Texas announced that it had removed all fixed Flock cameras after repeated vandalism damaged the equipment. The cameras were provided by the Heart of Texas Auto Theft Task Force, a multi-agency, multijurisdictional task force in Central Texas. The sheriff’s office has initiated criminal cases, but there are currently no suspects, according to a news release.

The debate over this technology is likely to continue through the rest of the year and into 2027, when more state legislatures return to session. That could bring additional proposals to regulate artificial intelligence tools used in policing, as well as how license plate reader data is collected, retained, shared and used.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.