Alton, IL has a F safety grade (7/100) with a violent crime rate of 963 per 100,000, 174% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Alton (24,809 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Alton, IL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 174% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Alton, IL shows violent crime at 963.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,668.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 174% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 963.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Alton ranks 9 of 506 — above 497 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +866.6% against the cohort median of 99.7. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Alton's 963.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Calumet Park (986.9), Carbondale (1004.9), Springfield (901.2), McCook (858.4). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.5% of the 901 Part I offenses reported in Alton for 2024, against a median of 11.2% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 15.3 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 55.7% of reported property offenses in Alton, against a cohort median of 70.3%. The remainder is burglary (234) and motor vehicle theft (59). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 829.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 963.4 in 2024 (+16.1%). The highest observed value was 963.4 in 2024 and the lowest 556.6 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Alton's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 15.7 Census sq mi, Alton logged 42.2 property and 15.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Alton leans on larceny-theft at 41% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,788.
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Alton offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (15.7 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 662 | 2668.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 369 | 1487.4 |
| Burglary | 234 | 943.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 59 | 237.8 |
| Arson | 6 | 24.2 |
| Violent Crime | 239 | 963.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 173 | 697.3 |
| Rape | 34 | 137 |
| Robbery | 29 | 116.9 |
| Murder | 3 | 12.1 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 26,027 | 829.9 | 3419.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 25,871 | 556.6 | 3173.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 25,212 | 912.3 | 3165.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 25,025 | 935.1 | 3100.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 24,809 | 963.4 | 2668.4 |
Alton Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Alton's 901 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Illinois cities closest to Alton in population. Their populations run from 24,068 to 25,788, against 24,809 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Alton sits at 963.4/100K violent (grade F); the Illinois cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Alton at 963.4/100K violent and 2,668.4/100K property - matched below outside Illinois (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
963.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,668.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Alton reported 239 violent crimes and 662 property crimes, for a total of 901 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Alton's violent crime rate increased by 3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 13.9%.
The most common crime type in Alton is larceny-theft, accounting for 41.0% of all reported crimes (369 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Alton figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Alton's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Alton, IL rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Alton is scored in the mid-size municipal band (24,809 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.