Real-Time Crime Index – Economists write every day

If you want to know how many pigs were killed in the United States yesterday, the USDA has the answer. But if you want to know how many people were killed in the US this month, it will take the FBI a year or two to find out. However, the new Real Time Crime Index can give you much earlier information by compiling the faster local authority reports:

The trends look good right now, even if the number of murders has not quite reached pre-2020 levels.

In addition to graphically displaying key federal and state trends, the Real Time Crime Index also offers the ability to download a CSV file with city data from 2018. This looks like a great resource for researchers, worth adding to my Most Improved Datasets page.