Carter Lake, IA has a F safety grade (14/100) with a violent crime rate of 560 per 100,000, 59% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Carter Lake is a small municipal reporter (3,749 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Carter Lake, IA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 59% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Carter Lake, IA shows violent crime at 560.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 4,747.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 59% 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.
Small-count caution
Carter Lake reported 21 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,749. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Position in the state cohort
At 560.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Carter Lake ranks 8 of 148 — above 140 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +292.5% against the cohort median of 142.7. 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 1162.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 560.1 in 2024 (-51.8%). The highest observed value was 1247.3 in 2022 and the lowest 560.1 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 Carter Lake's 560.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Sioux City (555.4), Albia (576.9), Davenport (581.4), Sabula (612.2). 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 10.6% of the 199 Part I offenses reported in Carter Lake for 2024, against a median of 15.9% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 5.3 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 Carter Lake'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.
Based on 21 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,749. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
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 1.8 Census sq mi, Carter Lake logged 99.2 property and 11.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Carter Lake's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (62% of 199 offenses; mix index 4,338).
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Carter Lake offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.8 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 | 178 | 4747.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 124 | 3307.5 |
| Burglary | 33 | 880.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 21 | 560.1 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 21 | 560.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 16 | 426.8 |
| Robbery | 4 | 106.7 |
| Rape | 1 | 26.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,784 | 1162.8 | 2959.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,793 | 843.7 | 3453.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,768 | 1247.3 | 3343.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,745 | 614.2 | 4512.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,749 | 560.1 | 4747.9 |
Carter Lake Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Carter Lake's 199 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 Iowa cities closest to Carter Lake in population. Their populations run from 3,505 to 4,059, against 3,749 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Carter Lake sits at 560.1/100K violent (grade F); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Carter Lake reported 21 violent crimes and 178 property crimes, for a total of 199 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Carter Lake's violent crime rate decreased by 8.8%, and the property crime rate increased by 5.2%.
The most common crime type in Carter Lake is larceny-theft, accounting for 62.3% of all reported crimes (124 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Carter Lake 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 Carter Lake's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Carter Lake, IA 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. Carter Lake is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,749 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.