Clinton, NC has a F safety grade (15/100) with a violent crime rate of 566 per 100,000, 61% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Clinton is a small municipal reporter (8,300 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with NC and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Clinton, NC is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 61% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Clinton, NC shows violent crime at 566.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,277.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 61% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1150.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 566.3 in 2024 (-50.8%). The highest observed value was 1337.5 in 2021 and the lowest 566.3 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 Clinton's 566.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Murfreesboro (558.7), Wilson (579.2), Spring Lake (541.1), Whiteville (537.2). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 566.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Clinton ranks 42 of 206 — above 164 of the 205 other North Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +114.9% against the cohort median of 263.5. 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 14.7% of the 319 Part I offenses reported in Clinton for 2024, against a median of 11.4% across comparable North Carolina cities — a gap of 3.3 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 Clinton'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 7.7 Census sq mi, Clinton logged 35.4 property and 6.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Clinton's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (69% of 319 offenses; mix index 5,022).
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Clinton offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (7.7 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 | 272 | 3277.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 219 | 2638.6 |
| Burglary | 34 | 409.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 19 | 228.9 |
| Arson | 3 | 36.1 |
| Violent Crime | 47 | 566.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 40 | 481.9 |
| Robbery | 4 | 48.2 |
| Rape | 2 | 24.1 |
| Murder | 1 | 12 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 8,431 | 1150.5 | 5301.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 8,299 | 1337.5 | 3084.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,004 | 1024.5 | 3673.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 8,229 | 899.3 | 4228.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 8,300 | 566.3 | 3277.1 |
Clinton Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Clinton's 319 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 North Carolina cities closest to Clinton in population. Their populations run from 7,902 to 8,633, against 8,300 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Clinton sits at 566.3/100K violent (grade F); the North Carolina cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Clinton reported 47 violent crimes and 272 property crimes, for a total of 319 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Clinton's violent crime rate decreased by 37%, and the property crime rate decreased by 22.5%.
The most common crime type in Clinton is larceny-theft, accounting for 68.7% of all reported crimes (219 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Clinton 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 Clinton's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Clinton, NC rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Clinton, NC 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. Clinton is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (8,300 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.