Crime Rates by City in US 2026 | Violent Crime, Property Crime & Facts

Crime rates by city in US 2026 show Memphis, Tennessee holding the nation’s highest violent crime rate at 2,501.3 per 100,000 residents, roughly seven times the national average. Meanwhile, Seattle posts the nation’s worst burglary and property crime rate, at 5,007.6 per 100,000, even as national crime falls to historic lows.

Crime Rates by City in US 2026 – Introduction

Crime rates by city in US 2026 tell a story that national averages alone cannot capture. While the country overall is experiencing its safest period in nearly 90 years, that improvement is distributed wildly unevenly across America’s urban centers. Memphis sits at the top of every major violent crime ranking, its rate more than six times the national figure, while cities like Merrimack, New Hampshire report essentially zero violent crime at all. This report uses the most current FBI-sourced city-level data available to break down exactly where American cities stand in 2026.

This report breaks down crime rates by city in US 2026 across every major dimension: the cities with the highest violent and property crime rates, murder rate outliers, the safest large cities in the country, the economic cost of crime by city, and the federal interventions now reshaping some of the nation’s most troubled urban crime landscapes. Because the FBI’s city-level crime tables run roughly a year behind the national topline figures, this report clearly separates the confirmed 2025 national trend from the most current available 2024 city-by-city breakdown, so readers understand exactly which numbers describe which point in time.

Interesting Facts About Crime Rates by City in 2026

Data Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer via OpenCrime and USAFacts, Security.org, MoneyGeek, SafeWise (2024-2026)

The numbers above reveal just how much a single city can distort the national conversation about crime. Memphis’s violent crime rate of 2,501.3 per 100,000 residents is not just the highest in the country, it sits roughly seven times above the national average of 359.1 per 100,000, a gap so large that the city alone has become the subject of a dedicated federal response, including a National Guard deployment and the newly formed Memphis Safe Task Force, credited with thousands of arrests since its launch. At the opposite extreme, cities like Merrimack, New Hampshire report so little violent crime that their rate rounds to essentially zero, a reminder that the “national average” obscures two genuinely different American crime experiences existing simultaneously.

Property crime tells an entirely separate geographic story from violent crime. Seattle, despite not ranking among the most violent cities, posts the worst burglary rate in the nation and an overall property crime rate of 5,007.6 per 100,000, nearly 185% above the national average, pushing its combined violent-and-property total crime rate to 5,782.7 per 100,000, the fourth-highest among the 30 largest US cities. This divergence between violent and property crime rankings means a city’s overall reputation for “danger” often depends heavily on which specific crime category a given ranking or news report emphasizes.

National Crime Context Behind City-Level Data 2026

National vs. Most Dangerous City Violent Crime Rate (per 100,000)
National Average (2024)   |████████ 359.1
Top 10 Cities Average     |█████████████████████████████████ 1,681.6
Memphis (Highest City)    |█████████████████████████████████████████████████ 2,501.3

Data Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, USAFacts, FBI Reported Crimes in the Nation 2025

Before ranking individual cities, it helps to understand the national backdrop these figures sit against. Violent crime fell 9.3% nationally between 2024 and 2025, the steepest single-year drop since the FBI began compiling estimates in 1936, pushing the national murder rate down to 4.1 per 100,000, tied with 1955 and 1956 for the lowest level ever recorded. Property crime improved similarly, falling to roughly 1,760 per 100,000 nationally in 2024 before continuing its decline into 2025, even as the downstream effects of these crime patterns keep the US corrections system, detailed in the Prison Statistics in the US report, under significant and growing strain.

Despite this dramatic national improvement, city-level FBI data lags the national topline by roughly a full year, meaning the most current available city rankings still reflect 2024 figures even as 2025’s historic national decline has already been confirmed. This reporting gap matters because it means some of the most dangerous cities profiled below have likely improved further since the data was collected, a pattern already visible in cities like Denver and Washington, D.C., which posted 40%-plus homicide declines in 2025 alone. Readers should treat every city-specific rate in this report as a 2024 snapshot rather than a real-time 2026 figure, even as the broader national trend line continues moving in a positive direction.

Cities with the Highest Violent Crime Rates in 2026

Highest Violent Crime Rates by City, per 100,000 (2024 Data)
Memphis, TN   |████████████████████████████████████████ 2,501.3
Detroit, MI   |█████████████████████████████ 1,781.0
Oakland, CA   |███████████████████████████ Elevated (3x+ national avg)

Data Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer via OpenCrime and Security.org (2024 data)

Memphis, Tennessee holds the highest violent crime rate of any major US city at 2,501.3 per 100,000 residents, a figure that has drawn sustained federal attention through 2025 and into 2026, including a National Guard deployment and the creation of the federally backed Memphis Safe Task Force, which Tennessee’s Republican leadership has credited with thousands of arrests since it began operating. Detroit, with a population of 692,044, posts the second-highest rate among major cities at 1,781 violent crimes per 100,000, a persistent challenge researchers trace back to the city’s 2013 municipal bankruptcy, decades of population loss, and the resulting strain on public safety resources and tax revenue needed to fund adequate policing.

Roughly 8 of the top 10 most dangerous cities by violent crime rate fall within the Midwest or South, though Oakland, California stands out as a notable West Coast exception, posting a violent crime rate more than three times the national average despite its geographic distance from the Midwest and Southern cities that otherwise dominate these rankings. The top 10 most dangerous cities average a combined rate of 1,681.6 per 100,000, nearly 4.7 times the national figure, though it’s worth noting that citywide statistics can mask dramatic neighborhood-level variation, with tourist districts in these same cities often experiencing 40% to 70% lower crime rates than surrounding residential areas.

Cities with the Highest Murder Rates in 2026

Highest City Murder Rates, per 100,000 (2024 Data)
Birmingham, AL  |████████████████████████████████████████ 58.9
St. Louis, MO   |████████████████████████████████████ 54.1

Data Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer via OpenCrime (2024 data)

Birmingham, Alabama holds the single highest murder rate of any major American city at 58.9 per 100,000 residents, a figure that stands apart even from the broader violent crime rankings dominated by cities like Memphis and Detroit. St. Louis, Missouri, at 54.1 per 100,000, represents what analysts describe as a “murder concentration” outlier, meaning the city’s overall violent crime rate does not rank among the very highest nationally, yet its homicide rate specifically runs exceptionally elevated relative to its other violent crime categories.

Murder rate rankings carry particular analytical weight because homicide is widely considered the most reliably reported crime category, since it is far harder to underreport a death than a robbery or assault that a victim might choose not to report to police. This reliability makes city murder rate comparisons especially useful for researchers, even though the broader murder rate picture, examined in far greater national and historical depth in the Murder Rate Statistics in US report, shows homicides falling sharply nationwide, with cities like Denver posting 41% declines and Washington, D.C. recording a 40% drop in the same period these elevated Birmingham and St. Louis figures were recorded.

Cities with the Highest Property Crime Rates in 2026

Property Crime by City, per 100,000 (2024 Data)
Seattle, WA        |████████████████████████████████████████ 5,007.6
National Average   |██████████████ 1,760.0

Data Source: SafeHome.org 2025-2026 Crime Rates in U.S. Cities Report

Seattle, Washington has ranked worst in the nation for burglary for multiple consecutive years, a troubling trend that has persisted despite ongoing city efforts to address property crime specifically. The city’s overall property crime rate of 5,007.6 per 100,000 residents runs 184.5% higher than the national average, and when combined with its violent crime figures, Seattle’s total crime rate of 5,782.7 per 100,000 ranks it as the fourth most crime-ridden city among the 30 largest cities in the country as of 2024 data. Notably, this persistent city-level problem exists even as Washington State as a whole saw property crime fall by more than 13% during the same year, illustrating how a single major city can anchor a state’s property crime statistics even while the broader state trend moves in a positive direction.

Memphis also appears prominently in property crime rankings alongside its violent crime dominance, leading large cities specifically in aggravated assault, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft simultaneously, a rare combination that places it near the top of nearly every major crime category tracked by the FBI. Nationally, property crime overall fell 9.0% between 2023 and 2024, with motor vehicle theft posting the steepest category decline at 19.5%, yet cities like Seattle demonstrate that national property crime improvements do not automatically translate into improvement within every individual metro area, particularly those with entrenched, well-documented burglary and theft problems.

Safest Large Cities in the US 2026

Safest Cities by Violent Crime Rate (25K+ Population, 2024 Data)
National Average         |████████████████████████████████████ 359.1
Safest Cities (25K+)     |█ Under 36 (90%+ below national average)
Merrimack, NH            |▏ 0.0

Data Source: SafeWise 100 Safest Cities Report, OpenCrime Safest Cities Rankings (2024-2026 data)

At the opposite end of the spectrum from Memphis and Detroit, Merrimack, New Hampshire reports a violent crime rate of essentially 0.0 per 100,000, the lowest of any city with at least 25,000 residents, according to FBI Crime Data Explorer figures. Among cities of any size, Shawangunk, New York ranks as the single safest city in the entire country for 2026, part of a broader pattern where New Jersey towns dominate the safest-cities list, claiming 17 of the top 100 spots, more than any other state. Notably, safety at this level is not confined strictly to tiny towns: the average population among the 100 safest US cities sits at nearly 14,000 residents, and the largest city on that list, Columbus, Indiana, holds more than 51,000 residents.

Among larger cities specifically, those with populations above 300,000, several planned suburban communities near major metros consistently rank among the safest in the country, including affluent suburbs of Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, and Raleigh’s Research Triangle. These cities share common characteristics that researchers consistently link to lower crime: higher median incomes, lower income inequality, higher rates of college education, and, in many cases, deliberately planned community layouts that minimize the concentrated urban poverty most strongly associated with elevated crime rates elsewhere in the country.

Economic Cost of Crime by City in 2026

Total Annual Cost of Crime by City ($ Billions, 2026)
New York City   |████████████████████████████████████████ $13.9B
Houston         |██████████████████████████████ $9.3B
Chicago         |████████████████████████████ $8.7B

Data Source: MoneyGeek Safest and Most Dangerous Cities Report (2026)

Ranking cities purely by total dollar cost of crime produces a very different list than ranking by crime rate alone, since total cost scales heavily with population size regardless of per-capita danger. New York City carries the highest total annual cost of crime in the country at approximately $13.9 billion, followed by Houston at $9.3 billion and Chicago at $8.7 billion, a ranking driven primarily by these cities’ enormous populations rather than unusually high per-capita crime rates. This methodology, developed by MoneyGeek using inflation-adjusted cost-per-offense estimates applied to FBI-reported crime counts, offers a genuinely different lens than the per-100,000 rate comparisons used throughout most of this report.

When cost is measured per resident rather than in aggregate, an entirely different set of cities emerges as comparatively “safe” in economic terms. Among cities with populations exceeding 300,000, Irvine, California carries the lowest crime cost per resident at just $447 annually, reflecting its high median income, planned community design, and consistently low violent and property crime rates. This per-capita cost framework captures something that raw crime-rate rankings sometimes miss: the true economic burden crime imposes on a typical resident’s tax dollars, insurance costs, and quality of life, independent of a city’s total population size.

Federal Intervention and City-Level Crime Response in 2026

Federal Crime Response Actions by City (2025-2026)
Memphis      |██████████████████████████████████ National Guard + Task Force
Other Cities |███████████████ Localized enforcement surges

Data Source: Security.org Most Dangerous Cities Report (2026), Council on Criminal Justice

The Trump administration enacted targeted federal crime crackdowns in several of the nation’s highest-crime cities during 2025 and 2026, with Memphis receiving the most direct action of any single city. The city’s National Guard deployment, paired with the newly established Memphis Safe Task Force and backed by Tennessee’s Republican state leadership, has been credited with thousands of arrests by early 2026, though independent, longer-term evaluation of the initiative’s actual impact on the city’s underlying violent crime rate remains ongoing as more recent data becomes available. These interventions reflect a broader national arrest and enforcement trend explored in the Adult Arrests Statistics in US report, which found total US arrests had fallen 25% since 2019 even before these targeted 2025-2026 city-specific enforcement surges began.

Encouragingly, city-level improvement has not been limited to jurisdictions receiving direct federal intervention. Researchers tracking the original 2019 list of the ten most dangerous American cities found that seven of those ten cities posted violent crime reductions of 10% to 30% by 2025, suggesting that a combination of local policy changes, community violence intervention programs, and broader national trends have driven improvement even in cities without the level of direct federal attention Memphis has received. This pattern indicates that no single intervention type explains the recent city-level crime improvements seen across the country, with different cities finding success through different combinations of local and federal strategies.

Data Limitations and Reporting Gaps by City in 2026

FBI City-Level Data Coverage and Gaps (2024)
Cities Reporting (100K+ population) |████████████████████████████████████ 217-334
Major Cities Missing From Dataset   |██████ 6 large cities absent

Data Source: USAFacts, FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program Methodology Notes

Anyone using city-level crime data needs to understand significant gaps in what the FBI actually publishes each year. Several of the country’s largest cities, including New York City, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, and New Orleans, simply did not appear in the FBI’s most recent 2024 city-level dataset, either due to non-reporting or data quality issues that excluded them from the agency’s official release. This means any “most dangerous” or “safest” city ranking that claims completeness is working from an incomplete national picture, since some of America’s most populous cities are effectively invisible in the underlying federal data for a given year.

The FBI’s ongoing transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which began replacing the older Summary Reporting System, created additional data comparability challenges specifically during the 2021 to 2023 period, as not all law enforcement agencies had completed the technical transition to the new reporting format in time. Different research organizations also apply different population thresholds when compiling their “most dangerous cities” lists, with Statista-style analyses typically requiring a 200,000-resident minimum while broader databases like OpenCrime include cities down to 100,000 residents, meaning the specific cities that appear on any given “top 10” list can shift meaningfully depending purely on which population cutoff and data-completeness standard a particular ranking chooses to apply.

Crime Rates by City – Frequently Asked Questions

Which US city has the highest violent crime rate in 2026? Memphis, Tennessee has the highest violent crime rate of any major US city at 2,501.3 per 100,000 residents, roughly seven times the national average.

Which city has the highest murder rate in the US? Birmingham, Alabama has the highest murder rate among major US cities at 58.9 per 100,000 residents.

Which US city has the worst property crime rate? Seattle, Washington has the worst property crime and burglary rate in the country at 5,007.6 per 100,000, nearly 185% above the national average.

What is the safest large city in the US? Merrimack, New Hampshire is the safest city with a population above 25,000, reporting a violent crime rate of essentially 0.0 per 100,000.

Which city has the highest total cost of crime? New York City has the highest total annual cost of crime at approximately $13.9 billion, though this reflects its enormous population rather than an unusually high per-capita crime rate.

Are US cities getting safer or more dangerous in 2026? Most are getting safer. Seven of the ten most dangerous cities identified in 2019 posted violent crime reductions of 10% to 30% by 2025, mirroring the broader 9.3% national violent crime decline.

Why isn’t New York City included in the FBI’s city crime rankings? New York City was among several large cities, including Jacksonville, Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, and New Orleans, that did not appear in the FBI’s most recent 2024 city-level crime dataset.

What federal action has been taken in the most dangerous cities? Memphis received the most direct federal response, including a National Guard deployment and the Memphis Safe Task Force, credited with thousands of arrests since 2025.

Does a city’s overall crime rate reflect every neighborhood equally? No. Even in high-crime cities, tourist districts often experience 40% to 70% lower crime rates than surrounding residential neighborhoods.

How much has the national violent crime rate fallen recently? The national violent crime rate fell 9.3% between 2024 and 2025, the largest single-year decline since the FBI began compiling estimates in 1936.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available FBI, municipal, and criminal justice research sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information presented. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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