Bessemer, AL has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 1744 per 100,000, 395% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Bessemer (24,720 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then AL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Bessemer, AL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 395% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bessemer, AL shows violent crime at 1,743.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 7,123.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 395% 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 1743.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bessemer ranks 4 of 263 — above 259 of the 262 other Alabama cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +716.5% against the cohort median of 213.5. 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 Bessemer's 1743.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Parrish (1758.0), Excel (1526.7), Atmore (1362.4), Brighton (2129.6). 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 19.7% of the 2,192 Part I offenses reported in Bessemer for 2024, against a median of 13.8% across comparable Alabama cities — a gap of 5.8 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1696.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1743.5 in 2024 (+2.8%). The highest observed value was 2372.1 in 2023 and the lowest 428.4 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Bessemer'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 40.6 Census sq mi, Bessemer logged 43.3 property and 10.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Bessemer leans on larceny-theft at 57% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,817.
Violent offenses are 20% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Bessemer offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (40.6 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 | 1,761 | 7123.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,252 | 5064.7 |
| Burglary | 284 | 1148.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 225 | 910.2 |
| Arson | 8 | 32.4 |
| Violent Crime | 431 | 1743.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 365 | 1476.5 |
| Robbery | 40 | 161.8 |
| Rape | 15 | 60.7 |
| Murder | 11 | 44.5 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 26,347 | 1696.6 | 4338.3 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 25,911 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 25,265 | 1848.4 | 7583.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 24,915 | 2372.1 | 7947 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 24,720 | 1743.5 | 7123.8 |
Bessemer Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Bessemer's 2,192 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
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 Alabama cities closest to Bessemer in population. Their populations run from 22,074 to 27,884, against 24,720 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Bessemer sits at 1,743.5/100K violent (grade F); the Alabama cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Bessemer at 1,743.5/100K violent and 7,123.8/100K property - matched below outside Alabama (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,743.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
7,123.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Bessemer reported 431 violent crimes and 1,761 property crimes, for a total of 2,192 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Bessemer's violent crime rate decreased by 26.5%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10.4%.
The most common crime type in Bessemer is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.1% of all reported crimes (1,252 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Bessemer 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 Bessemer's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bessemer, AL 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. Bessemer is scored in the mid-size municipal band (24,720 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.