Artesia, NM has a D safety grade (32/100) with a violent crime rate of 494 per 100,000, 40% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Artesia (12,152 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then NM and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Artesia, NM carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 40% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Artesia, NM shows violent crime at 493.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,156 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 40% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Artesia's 493.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Eunice (482.1), Bernalillo (481.2), Clayton (508.0), Santa Rosa (473.9). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 385.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 493.7 in 2024 (+28.1%). The highest observed value was 493.7 in 2024 and the lowest 214.1 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 74.4% of reported property offenses in Artesia, against a cohort median of 65.3%. The remainder is burglary (53) and motor vehicle theft (14). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 493.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Artesia ranks 20 of 43 — above 23 of the 42 other New Mexico cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +3.4% against the cohort median of 477.6. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Artesia'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 11.4 Census sq mi, Artesia logged 23 property and 5.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Artesia's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (61% of 322 offenses; mix index 4,148).
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Artesia offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (11.4 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 | 262 | 2156 |
| Larceny-Theft | 195 | 1604.7 |
| Burglary | 53 | 436.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 14 | 115.2 |
| Arson | 3 | 24.7 |
| Violent Crime | 60 | 493.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 41 | 337.4 |
| Rape | 17 | 139.9 |
| Robbery | 2 | 16.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 12,451 | 385.5 | 2698.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 12,286 | 301.2 | 2474.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 12,084 | 372.4 | 2697.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 12,145 | 214.1 | 2840.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 12,152 | 493.7 | 2156 |
Artesia Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Artesia's 322 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 New Mexico cities closest to Artesia in population. Their populations run from 7,330 to 12,816, against 12,152 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Artesia sits at 493.7/100K violent (grade D); the New Mexico cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Artesia at 493.7/100K violent and 2,156/100K property - matched below outside New Mexico (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
493.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,156/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Artesia reported 60 violent crimes and 262 property crimes, for a total of 322 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Artesia's violent crime rate increased by 130.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 24.1%.
The most common crime type in Artesia is larceny-theft, accounting for 60.6% of all reported crimes (195 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Artesia 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 Artesia's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Artesia, NM 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. Artesia is scored in the mid-size municipal band (12,152 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.