Avenal, CA has a C safety grade (52/100) with a violent crime rate of 468 per 100,000, 33% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Avenal (14,303 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Avenal, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 33% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Avenal, CA shows violent crime at 468.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 202.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 33% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 69.8% of the 96 Part I offenses reported in Avenal for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 52.7 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Avenal's 468.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Pico Rivera (468.1), Banning (467.1), South El Monte (466.6), Taft (470.5). 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.
2022–2024 direction
Across 3 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 331.6 per 100,000 in 2022 to 468.4 in 2024 (+41.3%). The highest observed value was 502.7 in 2023 and the lowest 331.6 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 468.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Avenal ranks 151 of 458 — above 307 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +42.6% against the cohort median of 328.5. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Violent counts are the sharper signal on Avenal's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. 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 19.5 Census sq mi, Avenal logged 1.5 property and 3.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Avenal's 2024 book concentrates in aggravated assault (66% of 96 offenses; mix index 4,746).
Violent offenses are 70% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Avenal offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (19.5 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 67 | 468.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 63 | 440.5 |
| Rape | 4 | 28 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 29 | 202.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 18 | 125.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 7 | 48.9 |
| Burglary | 4 | 28 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 3 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2022-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Comparable | 13,873 | 331.6 | 511.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 13,329 | 502.7 | 502.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 14,303 | 468.4 | 202.8 |
Avenal Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Avenal's 96 reported offenses (3-year span 2022-2024).
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 California cities closest to Avenal in population. Their populations run from 14,008 to 14,856, against 14,303 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Avenal sits at 468.4/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Avenal at 468.4/100K violent and 202.8/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
468.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
202.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Avenal reported 67 violent crimes and 29 property crimes, for a total of 96 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Avenal's violent crime rate decreased by 6.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 59.7%.
The most common crime type in Avenal is aggravated assault, accounting for 65.6% of all reported crimes (63 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Avenal 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 Avenal's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Avenal, CA 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. Avenal is scored in the mid-size municipal band (14,303 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.