What the Data Reveals About Mississippi’s Public Safety Challenge
Mississippi has made progress on crime. Reported violent and property crime are down, and homicide has fallen from its recent peak.
But serious challenges remain.
“When Crime Goes Unsolved” establishes a baseline of key public safety indicators, highlighting progress, persistent challenges, and gaps in Mississippi’s public safety data.
The data show:
- 17.6% decline in reported violent crime since 2021
- More than 16% decline in reported property crime
- 56% of homicides cleared by law enforcement in 2024
- 6,507 forensic cases pending in March 2026
Key findings
Violent and property crime are down. Mississippi’s reported violent crime rate remains well below the national rate, while reported property crime has declined by more than 16% since 2021.
Homicide remains a serious challenge. Mississippi’s 2023 homicide mortality rate was nearly three times the U.S. rate and the highest among neighboring states examined.
Many serious crimes go unsolved. In 2024, Mississippi law enforcement agencies reported clearing 56% of homicides, 35.1% of aggravated assaults, 28.1% of robberies, and 17.5% of rapes.
Nearly 4 in 10 returned to state custody. Among people released from state custody in fiscal year 2021, 39.1% returned within 36 months. A return to custody does not necessarily mean a new crime was committed.
Thousands of forensic cases remain pending. The Mississippi Forensics Laboratory reported 6,507 pending cases in March 2026.
What the numbers tell us
No single statistic can tell us whether Mississippi’s public-safety system is working. Together, these measures provide a baseline for understanding the state’s challenges and measuring progress toward safer communities.
Four priorities emerge from the research:
- Strengthen accountability for serious crime by increasing the likelihood that offenders are identified, apprehended, and appropriately punished.
- Improve capacity and coordination across law enforcement, forensics, courts, corrections, and other parts of the public-safety system.
- Support effective rehabilitation and reentry to help people successfully return to their communities and reduce future crime.
- Build better public-safety data to identify problems, direct resources, and measure results.
About the data
The Empower Policy & Innovation Center used the most recent comparable public data available from sources including the FBI, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Mississippi Department of Corrections, Mississippi Department of Human Services, federal juvenile-justice data, and the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory.
Sources measure different things and cover different years. The full report explains these limitations and includes the underlying data tables.
Cite this research
Empower Policy & Innovation Center. “When Crime Goes Unsolved: What the Data Reveals About Mississippi’s Public Safety Challenge.” Empower Mississippi, September 2026. https://empowerms.org/when-crime-goes-unsolved/
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