Updated April 2026 · FBI UCR 2023 data
Compare City Crime Rates
Side-by-side crime rate comparisons built on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data. Every figure is per-capita per 100,000 residents — the only fair way to compare cities of different sizes — and shown alongside the U.S. national rate of 363.8/100K violent and 1,832/100K property.
How City Comparisons Work
Each comparison page shows the same six signals for both cities: violent and property crime rates per 100,000 residents, the breakdown by offense (murder, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft), the 5-year trend direction, the population-weighted Safety Context Score, and a year-by-year chart. The U.S. national rate is shown alongside every figure so neither city is read in isolation.
We use per-capita rates because raw incident counts unfairly penalize larger cities — a city of two million residents reporting 1,000 burglaries is meaningfully safer per resident than a city of 50,000 reporting 500. The FBI itself publishes UCR data in per-100,000 units for the same reason, and that's the unit we carry through every comparison.
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What Each Comparison Shows
Safety Context Score
Composite A-F grade based on per-capita violent crime (40%), per-capita property crime (30%), and 5-year trend direction (30%). All inputs are population-adjusted FBI UCR figures.
Violent Crime Rate
Murder, robbery, and aggravated assault, expressed per 100,000 residents, with the U.S. national rate of 363.8/100K shown alongside.
Property Crime Rate
Burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft, per 100,000 residents. Property crime is far more common nationally than violent crime — 1,832/100K is the U.S. average.
5-Year Trend
Direction of total crime over the past five years. A negative trend means rates fell; a positive trend means they rose. Shown for both cities so direction is visible at a glance.
How to Read a Comparison
Three reading habits make these comparisons more useful. Look at tier, not just numbers: a small absolute gap between two cities at very different national-average ratios (one well below, one near the average) usually tells a different story than the gap between two cities at the same ratio. Look at trend, not just snapshot: a city with a higher rate that's falling can be a better long-run choice than a lower-rate city that's climbing. And look at the offense mix: cities with the same overall rate can have very different distributions across murder, robbery, assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft — and those distributions matter for how an individual experiences risk.
Each comparison page links back to the underlying city profiles for both cities, the methodology document, and the relevant rankings (safest, improving, etc.) for further context.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does CrimeContext compare two cities fairly?
Every comparison uses per-capita rates per 100,000 residents — the standard FBI Uniform Crime Reporting unit — so cities of very different sizes can be compared directly. The U.S. national rate (currently 363.8/100K violent and 1,832/100K property) is shown alongside both cities so readers can see how each compares to the national norm, not just to each other.
Why use per-capita rates instead of total counts?
Total counts unfairly penalize larger cities. A city of two million residents reporting 1,000 burglaries is meaningfully safer per resident than a city of 50,000 reporting 500 — but the raw numbers tell the opposite story. Per-100,000 rates are the unit the FBI itself uses in published reports, and the only fair basis for cross-city comparison.
What does the Safety Context Score weight?
The 0-100 composite weights three FBI inputs: per-capita violent crime versus the U.S. average (40%), per-capita property crime versus the U.S. average (30%), and the 5-year direction of total crime (30%). A city can score higher than another with a slightly lower current rate if its trend is improving faster — direction matters as much as the snapshot.
Which comparisons are most useful for relocation?
For relocation, same-size and same-region pairs tend to be the most informative — comparing a mid-size Sun Belt city against another mid-size Sun Belt city controls for population scale and reporting completeness. Cross-region comparisons (a Northeast college town versus a Mountain West suburb) are also useful but tend to amplify differences in property-crime mix that have more to do with population density than with safety per se.
Where can I verify the underlying numbers?
Every rate on a comparison page traces back to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program, accessible at the FBI Crime Data Explorer (cde.ucr.cjis.gov). Population denominators come from U.S. Census Bureau estimates. The Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes additional context on unreported crime (the share of crime that doesn't reach police) at bjs.ojp.gov.
Sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program (2023), accessed via the FBI Crime Data Explorer. Population denominators from the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates Program. Reporting context from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Public domain.
Last refreshed 2026-04-06 · FBI UCR 2023.