Bad Axe, MI has a C safety grade (51/100) with a violent crime rate of 371 per 100,000, 6% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Bad Axe is a small municipal reporter (2,962 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MI and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Bad Axe, MI is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 6% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bad Axe, MI shows violent crime at 371.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,350.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 6% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 172.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 371.4 in 2024 (+114.9%). The highest observed value was 371.4 in 2024 and the lowest 100.0 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Bad Axe reported 11 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 2,962. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Bad Axe's 371.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Auburn Hills (372.8), Marine City (375.1), Marlette (378.0), Big Rapids (363.8). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 371.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bad Axe ranks 89 of 366 — above 277 of the 365 other Michigan cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +98.6% against the cohort median of 187.0. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 21.6% of the 51 Part I offenses reported in Bad Axe for 2024, against a median of 16.7% across comparable Michigan cities — a gap of 4.9 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 90.0% of reported property offenses in Bad Axe, against a cohort median of 79.7%. The remainder is burglary (4) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Bad Axe'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.
Based on 11 reported violent incidents in a population of 2,962. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 2.3 Census sq mi, Bad Axe logged 17.2 property and 4.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Bad Axe's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (71% of 51 offenses; mix index 5,329).
Violent offenses are 22% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Bad Axe offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.3 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 | 40 | 1350.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 36 | 1215.4 |
| Burglary | 4 | 135 |
| Arson | 1 | 33.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 11 | 371.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 8 | 270.1 |
| Rape | 3 | 101.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 2,893 | 172.8 | 1451.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,868 | 104.6 | 1115.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,014 | 199.1 | 1559.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,999 | 100 | 1267.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,962 | 371.4 | 1350.4 |
Bad Axe Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Bad Axe's 51 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 Michigan cities closest to Bad Axe in population. Their populations run from 2,852 to 3,069, against 2,962 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Bad Axe sits at 371.4/100K violent (grade C); the Michigan cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Bad Axe reported 11 violent crimes and 40 property crimes, for a total of 51 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Bad Axe's violent crime rate increased by 271.4%, and the property crime rate increased by 6.6%.
The most common crime type in Bad Axe is larceny-theft, accounting for 70.6% of all reported crimes (36 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Bad Axe is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Bad Axe's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bad Axe, MI rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Bad Axe, MI 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. Bad Axe is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (2,962 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.