Columbia, TN has a F safety grade (21/100) with a violent crime rate of 573 per 100,000, 63% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Columbia (49,374 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TN and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Columbia, TN carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 63% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Columbia, TN shows violent crime at 573.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,487.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 63% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Columbia's 573.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Jamestown (572.5), Humboldt (574.9), Rockwood (579.2), Milan (564.2). 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 573.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Columbia ranks 31 of 176 — above 145 of the 175 other Tennessee cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +92.1% against the cohort median of 298.4. 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 772.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 573.2 in 2024 (-25.8%). The highest observed value was 772.9 in 2020 and the lowest 556.8 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 56.4% of reported property offenses in Columbia, against a cohort median of 77.1%. The remainder is burglary (456) and motor vehicle theft (79). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Columbia'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.
Across 36.5 Census sq mi, Columbia logged 33.6 property and 7.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Columbia leans on larceny-theft at 46% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,288.
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Columbia offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (36.5 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 | 1,228 | 2487.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 693 | 1403.6 |
| Burglary | 456 | 923.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 79 | 160 |
| Arson | 1 | 2 |
| Violent Crime | 283 | 573.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 235 | 476 |
| Rape | 26 | 52.7 |
| Robbery | 16 | 32.4 |
| Murder | 6 | 12.2 |
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 | 41,013 | 772.9 | 3201.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 42,613 | 666.5 | 2546.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 44,852 | 691.2 | 2124.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 47,770 | 556.8 | 2231.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 49,374 | 573.2 | 2487.1 |
Columbia Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Columbia's 1,511 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 Tennessee cities closest to Columbia in population. Their populations run from 44,049 to 57,138, against 49,374 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Columbia sits at 573.2/100K violent (grade F); the Tennessee cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Columbia at 573.2/100K violent and 2,487.1/100K property - matched below outside Tennessee (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
573.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,487.1/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+2.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Columbia reported 283 violent crimes and 1,228 property crimes, for a total of 1,511 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Columbia's violent crime rate increased by 2.9%, and the property crime rate increased by 11.5%.
The most common crime type in Columbia is larceny-theft, accounting for 45.9% of all reported crimes (693 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Columbia 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 Columbia's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Columbia, TN 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. Columbia is scored in the mid-size municipal band (49,374 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.