Atlantic City, NJ has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 1780 per 100,000, 406% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Atlantic City (38,480 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then NJ and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Atlantic City, NJ is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 406% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Atlantic City, NJ shows violent crime at 1,780.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 6,237 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 406% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 822.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1780.1 in 2024 (+116.3%). The highest observed value was 1908.1 in 2023 and the lowest 822.9 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 1780.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Atlantic City ranks 1 of 417 — above 416 of the 416 other New Jersey cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +2512.2% against the cohort median of 68.1. 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 Atlantic City's 1780.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Camden County Police Department (1380.5), Trenton (1025.9), Paterson (978.6), Bridgeton (919.9). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 22.2% of the 3,085 Part I offenses reported in Atlantic City for 2024, against a median of 7.1% across comparable New Jersey cities — a gap of 15.1 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.
Property counts dominate Atlantic City'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 10.8 Census sq mi, Atlantic City logged 223 property and 63.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Atlantic City's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (64% of 3,085 offenses; mix index 4,418).
Violent offenses are 22% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Atlantic City offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10.8 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 | 2,400 | 6237 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,972 | 5124.7 |
| Burglary | 236 | 613.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 192 | 499 |
| Arson | 10 | 26 |
| Violent Crime | 685 | 1780.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 432 | 1122.7 |
| Robbery | 179 | 465.2 |
| Rape | 67 | 174.1 |
| Murder | 7 | 18.2 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 37,550 | 822.9 | 2703.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 37,379 | 1070.1 | 4392.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 38,502 | 1696 | 8085.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 38,625 | 1908.1 | 6842.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 38,480 | 1780.1 | 6237 |
Atlantic City Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Atlantic City's 3,085 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 Jersey cities closest to Atlantic City in population. Their populations run from 36,579 to 40,656, against 38,480 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Atlantic City sits at 1,780.1/100K violent (grade F); the New Jersey cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Atlantic City at 1,780.1/100K violent and 6,237/100K property - matched below outside New Jersey (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,780.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
6,237/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-6.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Atlantic City reported 685 violent crimes and 2,400 property crimes, for a total of 3,085 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Atlantic City's violent crime rate decreased by 6.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 8.9%.
The most common crime type in Atlantic City is larceny-theft, accounting for 63.9% of all reported crimes (1,972 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Atlantic City 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 Atlantic City's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Atlantic City, NJ rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Atlantic City, NJ 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. Atlantic City is scored in the mid-size municipal band (38,480 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.