Bellwood, IL has a C safety grade (59/100) with a violent crime rate of 306 per 100,000, 13% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Bellwood (17,623 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Bellwood, IL is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 13% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bellwood, IL shows violent crime at 306.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,197.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 13% below 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 794.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 306.4 in 2024 (-61.4%). The highest observed value was 794.5 in 2020 and the lowest 306.4 in 2024. 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 Bellwood's 306.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Melrose Park (304.4), Jacksonville (303.7), Potomac (303.5), University Park (301.7). 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 306.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bellwood ranks 86 of 506 — above 420 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +207.4% against the cohort median of 99.7. 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 20.4% of the 265 Part I offenses reported in Bellwood for 2024, against a median of 11.2% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 9.2 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 53.1% of reported property offenses in Bellwood, against a cohort median of 70.3%. The remainder is burglary (50) and motor vehicle theft (49). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Bellwood'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 2.4 Census sq mi, Bellwood logged 88 property and 22.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Bellwood leans on larceny-theft at 42% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,661.
Violent offenses are 20% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Bellwood offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.4 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 | 211 | 1197.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 112 | 635.5 |
| Burglary | 50 | 283.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 49 | 278 |
| Arson | 1 | 5.7 |
| Violent Crime | 54 | 306.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 30 | 170.2 |
| Robbery | 18 | 102.1 |
| Rape | 4 | 22.7 |
| Murder | 2 | 11.3 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 18,629 | 794.5 | 1980.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 18,375 | 576.9 | 1229.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 17,972 | 400.6 | 1791.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 17,768 | 405.2 | 1682.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 17,623 | 306.4 | 1197.3 |
Bellwood Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Bellwood's 265 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 Illinois cities closest to Bellwood in population. Their populations run from 17,272 to 18,035, against 17,623 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Bellwood sits at 306.4/100K violent (grade C); the Illinois cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Bellwood at 306.4/100K violent and 1,197.3/100K property - matched below outside Illinois (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
306.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,197.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Bellwood reported 54 violent crimes and 211 property crimes, for a total of 265 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Bellwood's violent crime rate decreased by 24.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 28.9%.
The most common crime type in Bellwood is larceny-theft, accounting for 42.3% of all reported crimes (112 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Bellwood 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 Bellwood's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bellwood, IL rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Bellwood, IL 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. Bellwood is scored in the mid-size municipal band (17,623 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.