Finding Truth: What the Crime Numbers Show, and Who Actually Controls Bail

Before the coffee gets cold, remember that how safe we feel and how safe we are can point in different directions, and both deserve to be taken seriously.

Day 12 of our fifteen-day series, and today we take on the subject where fear, statistics, and campaign messaging collide hardest: crime.

I want to start by respecting something. Many of you have personal experience behind your concern about crime, and some of you live in neighborhoods where it's a daily reality. Nothing in this post asks you to dismiss that. What it does is test the claims being made on your behalf this fall against the record, and then ask who actually controls which lever. We covered claims about immigrants and crime back on Day 7, so I won't repeat that here.

So pour a cup, and let's start with what the data shows.

What the State's Own Numbers Show

The Texas Department of Public Safety publishes an annual Crime in Texas report built from reports by more than 1,600 law enforcement agencies. Here are its 2025 figures for violent crime and murder:

	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Violent crimes reported	134,735	132,951	127,383	124,970	110,113
Violent crime rate per 100,000	465.76	448.43	421.03	401.74	348.77
Murders reported	2,071	2,098	1,894	1,645	1,458
Murder rate per 100,000	7.16	7.08	6.26	5.29	4.62

From 2024 to 2025, violent crime fell 11.9% in volume and 13.2% in rate. Murder fell 11.4% in volume. Compared with 2021, the violent crime rate is down 25% and the murder rate is down about 35%. Property crime is down 12% in 2025 as well, with motor vehicle theft, which spiked to 126,739 in 2023, falling to 79,936. Every one of the 25 largest agencies reported a lower crime rate in 2025 than in 2024.

The picture is similar nationally. The FBI reports the largest one-year drop in violent crime since 1936, with the murder rate falling 18.1% to 4.1 per 100,000, the lowest since 1955. The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research group tracking 40 large cities, found homicides down 21% in 2025.

What those numbers can and can't tell you:

• The reporting changed. Texas made detailed national reporting mandatory in 2023. Before that, participation was voluntary and inconsistent. DPS notes that a quarterly report earlier in 2025 showed a bigger drop that was attributed in part to incomplete agency submissions, and the annual figures can be revised. So the size of the 2025 decline is firm in direction but less certain in degree.

• Texas is not unusually safe. Texas's 2025 murder rate of 4.62 appears somewhat above the FBI's national figure of 4.1, though the two aren't calculated identically. Texas is falling with the nation, not outrunning it.

• Some places are exceptions. The Council on Criminal Justice projects Austin's homicide rate in the first half of 2026 at 74% above 2019, one of four large cities up since 2019, though it cautions that small totals cause large percentage swings and that causes are complex. El Paso was the only top-25 Texas agency with a five-year increase in overall crime rate (4%).

• No one has shown why crime fell. Researchers describe the drivers as complex. Anyone claiming a single cause, from either side, is going beyond the evidence.

Perception vs. Reality

A Texas 2036 voter poll (I don't have the date, so confirm it before quoting) found 81% of voters concerned about crime, with more concern about urban areas (88%) than their own communities (75%), while 93% said they feel safe overall. The pollsters noted a disconnect between perceptions and statistics: many people believe crime is increasing even as the numbers fall.

That gap isn't proof that people are wrong about their own streets. Local conditions vary, as Austin shows. But it helps explain why messages about crime land hard even when the statewide trend is improving. Local news, social media clips, and viral videos spread incidents without context, a theme from Day 1. A clip with no date, place, or source tells you almost nothing about trends.

Policing: Staffing, Response Times, and Whether Cases Get Solved

Crime statistics tell you what happened. These three measures tell you what happens next: whether officers are available, how fast they arrive, and whether anyone is held accountable.

Staffing. Texas has no single statewide staffing count that I could verify, so the picture comes from the big cities.

• Austin: as of April 2026 the department was down nearly 340 officers, with vacancies tripling from before 2020. Reporting in 2025 put the shortfall at about 230, and a separate account said the vacancy rate more than doubled to 18% between 2020 and 2024. The numbers differ by date and definition. The encouraging sign is that 2024 to 2025 showed more officers hired than leaving.

• Dallas: about 3,300 officers against a voter-approved target of 4,000. The chief calls it a historic high, and the city plans to hire 350 more in 2026. The proposed 2027 police budget is over $823 million.

Response times. These are measured differently in every city, so don't compare one city's number directly to another's.

• Dallas: the department's fiscal year 2026 figures, per KERA, were 8.62 minutes for Priority 1 (life-threatening) calls, 66 minutes for Priority 2, and over 110 minutes for Priority 3 and 4. That's an improvement over earlier reporting of 11.3 minutes and 108 minutes, though the older figures have no clear date. Averages hide gaps: in July 2025, NBC DFW reported Priority 1 waits of up to 78 minutes in the Southeast patrol division.

• Austin: crime analyst Jeff Asher found average response to 911 calls rose from 29 minutes in 2019 to over 45 minutes in 2024, with high-priority calls averaging about 12 minutes 45 seconds in 2024.

• Houston: I saw a claim of about 6 minutes for Priority 1 calls in 2025, but the source was weak, so I'm leaving it out.

Clearance rates. A crime is "cleared" when police make an arrest or meet strict exceptional-clearance criteria. From the state's 2025 report:

Offense	Reported	Cleared	Clearance rate
Murder	1,458	838	57.5%
Aggravated assault	76,580	32,009	41.8%
Robbery	16,546	4,406	26.6%
Rape	15,163	2,568	16.9%

Three cautions. First, clearances arrive months or years after an incident, and the state only counted data reported by March 2026, so recent years look lower than they will end up. Second, many small agencies joined the state system recently and show low clearance percentages. Third, national figures vary by method: one analysis put the national homicide clearance rate at 50% in 2021 and 69% in 2025, another at roughly 59% to 61% for 2024, and a policy group put overall violent crime clearance under 44% in 2024. So don't read Texas's 57.5% as above or below the nation without matching definitions. The consistent point across sources is that serious violent crimes get solved far more often than robbery and rape.

The State Law on Local Police Funding

In 2021, after Austin cut roughly $142 to $150 million from its police budget following the 2020 protests, the Legislature passed House Bill 1900, which Governor Abbott signed as part of his "Back the Blue" package. For cities over 250,000 that reduce police funding, it:

• freezes their property tax revenue,

• strips their annexation powers for 10 years,

• and lets the state withhold sales tax revenue and redirect it to the Department of Public Safety.

A companion law, Senate Bill 23, requires voter approval to reduce law enforcement budgets in counties over one million people.

Austin reversed most of the cut a year later and its police budget reached about $476 million by 2023. Supporters say the law guarantees stable funding and kept other cities from following Austin. Critics, including Austin's then-interim police chief, called it government overreach and said budget size doesn't map neatly to public safety. Both views fit the same record: Austin still has a major staffing gap despite the larger budget.

There's a related development that cuts the other way on local control. Dallas voters approved Proposition U in 2024, a charter amendment requiring 4,000 officers and at least half of excess city revenue for public safety. In February 2026, Attorney General Paxton sued Dallas officials, alleging they miscalculated excess revenue ($61 million reported versus about $220 million by his office's count for 2025-26) and skipped a required pay survey. Dallas is seeking dismissal on governmental immunity grounds, and no hearing had been scheduled in the coverage I found. The Texas Tribune noted Dallas crime has fallen. It's an unusual case: the state enforcing a city's own voter-approved rule.

Mental Health Response: Sending Someone Other Than Police

The idea is simple: when a 911 call is about a psychiatric crisis, send a clinician, alone or alongside an officer. Texas cities have tried several versions.

• Austin: its Expanded Mobile Crisis Outreach Team has operated since 2013, and the city integrated mental health professionals directly into 911 call-taking. A study by the LBJ School and Cornell University, as described by the provider Integral Care, found over a 50% reduction in officer time on scene, with fewer arrests and hospitalizations. I haven't read the study, and the provider has a stake in the results.

• Dallas: the RIGHT Care program pairs a police officer, a paramedic, a social worker, and a clinician. The city says it runs 18 teams around the clock.

• Statewide: the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline has handled over 380,000 Texas calls since 2022, including about 26,000 in October 2025. In January 2025 it faced a $7 million deficit, with 85% of calls answered in state against a 90% target. The Legislature passed House Bill 5342, effective September 1, 2025, creating a 988 trust fund funded by grants and donations and ordering a study of other funding options, including a telecom fee, due December 1, 2026. Critics say that isn't a stable funding source, and federal grants are set to expire in 2026.

These programs are real and some early results are promising, but I found no statewide evaluation, and most favorable figures come from the programs themselves.

Bail: How It Actually Works

Bail is set by magistrates and judges at the start of a case. Its purpose is to make sure a person returns to court and doesn't endanger the public. The mechanics matter because most people in county jails haven't been convicted. One advocacy group, Texas Appleseed, says nearly 75% of county jail inmates in Texas are awaiting trial, and a national advocacy group puts the figure at about 69% for city and county jails across the country. I couldn't verify those against the state jail commission's own reports, so treat them as approximations from interested parties.

Texas has been tightening bail law. In 2025, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 9, which, as reported, requires magistrates to deny bail to people charged with serious crimes such as murder and aggravated sexual assault, particularly with prior felony convictions. Governor Abbott signed it. It was paired with a constitutional amendment, Proposition 3, which Texas voters approved on November 4, 2025, with about 61% of the vote. It lets judges deny bail for certain violent or sexual felonies, including murder, aggravated assault, and human trafficking, if the state shows by a preponderance of the evidence that bail is insufficient to protect the public or ensure a court appearance. It applies to offenses committed after it took effect.

The arguments, fairly stated:

• Supporters say a small number of repeat violent offenders account for a large share of harm, and a judge should be able to hold them.

• Critics, including the ACLU, say it weakens the presumption of innocence, increases reliance on cash bail, and falls hardest on low-income defendants. They also point to jail overcrowding and cost.

Litigation Is a Real Lever Here

Bail is one of the clearest cases where a lawsuit changed policy, and it's in the news this week. In 2016, misdemeanor defendants sued Harris County, alleging they were jailed solely because they couldn't pay. A 2019 settlement, the ODonnell consent decree, required most low-level defendants to be released on personal bonds. It doesn't cover felonies. On October 5, a federal judge refused Attorney General Paxton's bid to end the decree, citing, per the Texas Tribune, that it prevents worsening poverty and promotes public safety. Paxton argued that new state laws requiring cash bail for certain violent offenses conflict with the decree, and cited a recent executive order from President Trump against cashless bail. A court monitor's report found no increase in repeat misdemeanor offenders since the decree took effect, and a similar case involving Dallas County has been referenced. Paxton has appealed. I didn't read the ruling itself, only reporting on it, and the monitor is a court-appointed party, so critics may dispute its framing.

A second legal tool is Texas's 2023 "rogue prosecutor" law, which lets residents petition to remove district attorneys for official misconduct, including refusing to prosecute certain categories of crime. A petition against Travis County DA José Garza advanced under it, and Garza called it politically motivated. I couldn't confirm the case's current status. Abbott's four-point public safety agenda includes holding non-compliant prosecutors accountable and creating a statewide prosecutor, which would take legislation to create, not just a governor's signature.

Where the Rhetoric and the Record Part Ways

Both sides have claims that outrun the evidence.

• "Crime is out of control in Texas." The state's own data show violent crime and murder falling for several years, with some local exceptions like Austin.

• "Our tough laws made Texas safe." Crime fell nationwide too, and the 2025 bail laws came too recently to explain a decline that began earlier. Credit and blame are both premature.

• "Bail reform caused a crime wave." In Harris County, the court monitor found no increase in repeat misdemeanor offenders after reform, though that covers misdemeanors, not violent felonies, which weren't part of the decree.

• "Cash bail has no public safety value." Some defendants do pose real risks, which is why legislators in both parties have supported at least some bail restrictions, and why a judge may weigh the specific person.

• "More police funding automatically means more safety," or the reverse. Austin has a larger budget and still a large staffing gap, and Dallas crime fell while the state sued it for spending too little. Budget size, staffing, response times, and clearance rates are different measures, and they don't always move together.

• "[Candidate] is soft on crime" or "a defund-the-police radical." These are labels attached to individual votes, and I haven't verified the underlying votes. Abbott's campaign points to Hinojosa not supporting measures like "Jocelyn's Law," which aimed to deny bail to certain immigrants charged with violent crimes. Hinojosa's campaign says Abbott uses police for political advantage and threatens their funding, and she has run an ad featuring police officers. A conservative outlet reports that Talarico voted against several bail and police-funding bills, including measures penalizing cities that cut police budgets, while supporting others such as enhanced penalties for aggravated assault. Patrick's campaign makes similar claims about Goodwin. All of these are checkable in the Legislature's public voting records, and one vote rarely tells the whole story of a bill's content.

• What's missing. None of the candidates I found addressed police staffing shortfalls, slow response times, low clearance rates for robbery and rape, or 988's funding gap. Those are the areas where state action could plausibly matter most.

Who Actually Has Authority Here

Governor (Abbott vs. Hinojosa): can sign or veto criminal justice legislation, set special session priorities, deploy Department of Public Safety troopers, and direct public safety grants. Cannot set bail or direct local prosecutors. Abbott signed HB 1900 and the 2025 bail laws, and his four-point agenda is to end the "revolving door" for violent offenders, create a statewide prosecutor, hold non-compliant district attorneys accountable, and give police more tools. Hinojosa has emphasized overreach, private detention contracts, and her record, and has run an ad with police officers.

Lieutenant Governor and Legislature (Patrick vs. Goodwin): write bail, sentencing, police funding, and 988 funding law. The Lieutenant Governor controls the Senate calendar. Patrick promotes the 2025 bail laws. I didn't find a direct statement from Goodwin on the specific bills, only Patrick's characterizations.

Local officials, who matter most day to day: district attorneys decide what to charge, judges and magistrates set bail, sheriffs run jails, and city councils and county commissioners fund police and crisis response, within the limits state law sets. These offices are on many of your ballots and rarely get this much attention.

Attorney General (Johnson vs. Middleton): limited power to prosecute directly, but significant influence through litigation, as the ODonnell challenge and the Dallas Proposition U suit show. Nathan Johnson is running on consumer protection and a non-partisan office, and Mayes Middleton on a conservative agenda. I didn't find crime-specific statements from either. The race is close, with one poll at 46% to 43%.

U.S. Senate (Paxton vs. Talarico): federal law enforcement funding, oversight of agencies like the FBI and ATF, federal criminal law, and confirmation of federal judges and U.S. attorneys. No authority over Texas bail or local policing. Paxton's current role as Attorney General is where his crime-related actions, like the ODonnell challenge and the Dallas suit, have happened.

A Student of Truth's Approach

• Is a crime claim about a rate or a raw count, and over what time period?

• Is it national, statewide, or one city? Local trends can differ sharply from the state's.

• Does the data come from a source that changed how it counts, and does the claim account for that?

• Is a response time or clearance rate being compared across cities or years that define it differently?

• Is the lever a candidate promises to pull actually controlled by their office?

• Is a viral crime clip verified, with a date, place, and context?

• Is a "soft on crime" label backed by a specific, checkable vote, and does that vote represent the whole bill?

A Call to Action

This week, before the coffee gets cold, find out who your district attorney, sheriff, and county judges are, and whether they're on your ballot. Look up your own county's crime data in the state's online portal at the Texas Department of Public Safety, and check your city's police staffing and response time dashboards, since many cities now publish them. For many of us, those local offices have more say over bail, policing, and crisis response than the statewide races getting the attention.

Tomorrow, Day 13, we turn to guns in Texas: constitutional carry, red flag laws, and what the numbers say.

A Student of Truth Is Now Available

A Student of Truth: Think Clearly in a World of Misinformation, Outrage, and AI is now live on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback. If separating how safe we feel from what the data shows, without dismissing either, is the kind of thinking you value, I'd be grateful if you picked up a copy and left an honest review once you've finished it.

I'm also deep into writing the next book in the series, The Ledger and the Lie: Government, Economics, and the Stories We're Sold, targeted for completion by year end. A topic where fear can run a long way ahead of the numbers is exactly the kind of story-versus-ledger gap that book is built to examine.

As always, I'd love to hear from you. How safe do you feel in your community, and what has changed? Your experience is a legitimate data point alongside the statistics. Send your thoughts to hello@cletustaylor.com, or leave a comment wherever you're reading this.

Author note: Cletus Taylor writes the Finding Truth series to encourage thoughtful citizenship, moral courage, and the lifelong work of seeking truth with humility, especially when fear and the facts point in different directions.

Cletus Taylor, keeping the coffee hot and the ledger open for tomorrow.