Belen, NM has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 1159 per 100,000, 229% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Belen is a small municipal reporter (7,508 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with NM and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Belen, NM carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 229% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Belen, NM shows violent crime at 1,158.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 4,235.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 229% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 1158.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Belen ranks 3 of 43 — above 40 of the 42 other New Mexico cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +142.6% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 743.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1158.8 in 2024 (+55.8%). The highest observed value was 1358.4 in 2023 and the lowest 743.6 in 2020. 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 Belen's 1158.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Albuquerque (1181.8), Farmington (951.2), Taos (936.6), Roswell (848.4). 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.
Property counts dominate Belen'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.
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 19 Census sq mi, Belen logged 16.7 property and 4.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Belen leans on larceny-theft at 49% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,284.
Violent offenses are 21% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Belen offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (19 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 | 318 | 4235.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 198 | 2637.2 |
| Burglary | 71 | 945.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 49 | 652.6 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 87 | 1158.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 85 | 1132.1 |
| Rape | 1 | 13.3 |
| Robbery | 1 | 13.3 |
| 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 | 7,396 | 743.6 | 4556.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,481 | 1296.6 | 4945.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,460 | 1099.2 | 4517.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,435 | 1358.4 | 3564.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 7,508 | 1158.8 | 4235.5 |
Belen Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Belen's 405 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 Belen in population. Their populations run from 5,985 to 8,953, against 7,508 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Belen sits at 1,158.8/100K violent (grade F); the New Mexico cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Belen reported 87 violent crimes and 318 property crimes, for a total of 405 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Belen's violent crime rate decreased by 14.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 18.8%.
The most common crime type in Belen is larceny-theft, accounting for 48.9% of all reported crimes (198 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Belen 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 Belen's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Belen, 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. Belen is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (7,508 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.