Alton, TX has a F safety grade (20/100) with a violent crime rate of 836 per 100,000, 137% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Alton (22,140 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TX and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Alton, TX is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 137% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Alton, TX shows violent crime at 835.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,088.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 137% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 43.4% of the 426 Part I offenses reported in Alton for 2024, against a median of 14.3% across comparable Texas cities — a gap of 29.1 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 835.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Alton ranks 16 of 686 — above 670 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +367.0% against the cohort median of 178.9. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 552.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 835.6 in 2024 (+51.2%). The highest observed value was 835.6 in 2024 and the lowest 470.4 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Alton's 835.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Cuero (826.9), Kirby (824.7), Lubbock (821.0), Rockdale (810.4). 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.
Alton's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters 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 7.6 Census sq mi, Alton logged 31.7 property and 24.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Alton leans on larceny-theft at 42% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,497.
Violent offenses are 43% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Alton offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (7.6 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 | 241 | 1088.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 177 | 799.5 |
| Burglary | 39 | 176.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 25 | 112.9 |
| Arson | 1 | 4.5 |
| Violent Crime | 185 | 835.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 173 | 781.4 |
| Rape | 5 | 22.6 |
| Robbery | 4 | 18.1 |
| Murder | 3 | 13.6 |
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 18,632 | 552.8 | 1057.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 19,344 | 470.4 | 1013.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 19,391 | 520.9 | 1088.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 20,357 | 727 | 1247.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 22,140 | 835.6 | 1088.5 |
Alton Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Alton's 426 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 Texas cities closest to Alton in population. Their populations run from 20,867 to 23,165, against 22,140 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Alton sits at 835.6/100K violent (grade F); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Alton at 835.6/100K violent and 1,088.5/100K property - matched below outside Texas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
835.6/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,088.5/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Alton reported 185 violent crimes and 241 property crimes, for a total of 426 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Alton's violent crime rate increased by 14.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 12.8%.
The most common crime type in Alton is larceny-theft, accounting for 41.5% of all reported crimes (177 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, TX rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Alton, TX FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
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 (22,140 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.