WEST ORANGE, NJ — Towns and cities across the nation saw big drops in violent crime last year, including West Orange – and it's a trend that has been developing for decades, federal data shows.
The FBI recently released nationwide Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for 1979 to 2025, which can be seen online here.
According to the FBI, the list of "violent crimes" includes homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
There were 55 violent crimes reported in West Orange during 2025. With an estimated population of 49,557, that would give the town a violent crime rate of 111 per 100,000 people: a 21.2 percent decrease from the previous year.
West Orange remains significantly below both state and national averages for violent crime – although those have seen big decreases, too.
New Jersey had a population of 9,548,215 people and saw 18,508 violent crimes last year. The state's violent crime rate dropped from 219.7 crimes per 100,000 in 2024 to 193.8 crimes per 100,000 people in 2025: an 11.8 percent decrease.
Meanwhile, the national violent crime rate fell 9.3 percent last year, marking the largest year-to-year decline since the FBI began estimating crime trends in 1936. The United States saw an overall 327.6 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2025.
It's not a new trend, FBI data shows: violent crime has been steadily dropping across the nation since the early 1990s.
New Jersey's violent crime rate peaked in 1990, when the state had a population of 7,730,188 people and saw 50,057 violent crimes: a rate of 647.6 per 100,000 people.
The national violent crime rate peaked in 1991. The United States had a population of 252,153,092 that year and saw 1,911,767 crimes: a rate of 758.2 per 100,000 people.
Here is a recent list of violent crimes per year in West Orange, as seen on the FBI database (the 2021 year is excluded due to transition from a previous data system):
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