Charleston, IL has a C safety grade (49/100) with a violent crime rate of 360 per 100,000, 2% above the national average.
Charleston (16,957 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IL and national benchmarks.
Charleston, IL carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 2% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Charleston, IL shows violent crime at 359.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,792.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 2% above 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.
The verdict
Charleston earns a C safety grade: violent crime runs 2% above the U.S. average, placing it higher-crime than most U.S. cities.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 105.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 359.7 in 2024 (+241.5%). The highest observed value was 359.7 in 2024 and the lowest 23.0 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 359.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Charleston ranks 66 of 506 — above 440 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +260.9% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Charleston's 359.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Freeport (362.6), Loves Park (356.0), Atwood (365.6), Monmouth (366.4). 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 16.7% of the 365 Part I offenses reported in Charleston for 2024, against a median of 11.2% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 5.5 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 62.2% of reported property offenses in Charleston, against a cohort median of 70.3%. The remainder is burglary (103) and motor vehicle theft (12). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Charleston'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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 304 | 1792.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 189 | 1114.6 |
| Burglary | 103 | 607.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 12 | 70.8 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 61 | 359.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 39 | 230 |
| Rape | 21 | 123.8 |
| Robbery | 1 | 5.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 19,933 | 105.4 | 275.9 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 19,861 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 17,361 | 23 | 63.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 17,058 | 281.4 | 1248.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 16,957 | 359.7 | 1792.8 |
Charleston's crime figures on this page originate from Charleston Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 Charleston in population. Their populations run from 16,464 to 17,623, against 16,957 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Illinois cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Charleston's 359.7/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Charleston 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 Charleston's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Charleston, IL 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. Charleston is scored in the mid-size municipal band (16,957 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.