Bowie, MD has a B safety grade (61/100) with a violent crime rate of 193 per 100,000, 45% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 56,929 residents, Bowie is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against MD and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Bowie, MD carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 45% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bowie, MD shows violent crime at 193.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,280 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 45% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B 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 111.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 193.2 in 2024 (+72.8%). The highest observed value was 193.2 in 2024 and the lowest 111.8 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 Bowie's 193.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Hurlock (191.4), Fruitland (200.4), Manchester (179.6), Greensboro (207.5). 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 193.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bowie ranks 48 of 72 — above 24 of the 71 other Maryland cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -34.0% against the cohort median of 293.0. 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 7.8% of the 1,408 Part I offenses reported in Bowie for 2024, against a median of 14.6% across comparable Maryland cities — a gap of 6.8 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.
Property counts dominate Bowie'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 20.4 Census sq mi, Bowie logged 63.5 property and 5.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Bowie's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (71% of 1,408 offenses; mix index 5,365).
Violent offenses are only 8% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Bowie offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (20.4 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 | 1,298 | 2280 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,003 | 1761.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 216 | 379.4 |
| Burglary | 79 | 138.8 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 110 | 193.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 57 | 100.1 |
| Robbery | 33 | 58 |
| Rape | 20 | 35.1 |
| 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 | 59,008 | 111.8 | 960.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 58,546 | 123 | 1076.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 57,068 | 126.2 | 1245.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 56,678 | 169.4 | 1432.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 56,929 | 193.2 | 2280 |
Bowie Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Bowie's 1,408 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 Maryland cities closest to Bowie in population. Their populations run from 24,193 to 88,428, against 56,929 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Bowie sits at 193.2/100K violent (grade B); the Maryland cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Bowie at 193.2/100K violent and 2,280/100K property - matched below outside Maryland (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
193.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,280/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+14% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Bowie reported 110 violent crimes and 1,298 property crimes, for a total of 1,408 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Bowie's violent crime rate increased by 14%, and the property crime rate increased by 59.1%.
The most common crime type in Bowie is larceny-theft, accounting for 71.2% of all reported crimes (1,003 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Bowie's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Bowie's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bowie, MD 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. Bowie is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (56,929 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.