Bethel, AK has a F safety grade (10/100) with a violent crime rate of 1656 per 100,000, 370% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Bethel is a small municipal reporter (6,280 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with AK and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Bethel, AK is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 370% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bethel, AK shows violent crime at 1,656.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,245.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 370% 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 1656.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bethel ranks 1 of 25 — above 24 of the 24 other Alaska cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +536.0% against the cohort median of 260.4. 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 Bethel's 1656.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Anchorage (1014.8), Nome (828.5), Bristol Bay Borough (817.8), Fairbanks (697.7). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 42.4% of the 245 Part I offenses reported in Bethel for 2024, against a median of 23.4% across comparable Alaska cities — a gap of 19.1 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 60.3% of reported property offenses in Bethel, against a cohort median of 80.7%. The remainder is burglary (26) and motor vehicle theft (30). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1400.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1656.1 in 2024 (+18.3%). The highest observed value was 1656.1 in 2024 and the lowest 1280.3 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Bethel'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 45.1 Census sq mi, Bethel logged 3.1 property and 2.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Bethel's 7 active offense types stay diversified (mix index 2,425); larceny-theft still leads at 35%.
Violent offenses are 42% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Bethel offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (45.1 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 | 141 | 2245.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 85 | 1353.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 30 | 477.7 |
| Burglary | 26 | 414 |
| Arson | 4 | 63.7 |
| Violent Crime | 104 | 1656.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 69 | 1098.7 |
| Rape | 31 | 493.6 |
| Robbery | 4 | 63.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 6,642 | 1400.2 | 1144.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,717 | 1280.3 | 774.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,267 | 1579.7 | 654.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,247 | 1376.7 | 1104.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,280 | 1656.1 | 2245.2 |
Bethel Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Bethel's 245 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 Alaska cities closest to Bethel in population. Their populations run from 4,204 to 8,306, against 6,280 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Bethel sits at 1,656.1/100K violent (grade F); the Alaska cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Bethel reported 104 violent crimes and 141 property crimes, for a total of 245 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Bethel's violent crime rate increased by 20.3%, and the property crime rate increased by 103.3%.
The most common crime type in Bethel is larceny-theft, accounting for 34.7% of all reported crimes (85 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Bethel 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 Bethel's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bethel, AK rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Bethel, AK 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. Bethel is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,280 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.