Columbus, OH has a D safety grade (34/100) with a violent crime rate of 435 per 100,000, 24% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 915,447 residents, Columbus is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against OH and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Columbus, OH carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 24% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Columbus, OH shows violent crime at 434.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,653.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 24% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 434.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Columbus ranks 31 of 340 — above 309 of the 339 other Ohio cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +284.5% against the cohort median of 113.1. 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 Columbus's 434.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Butler Township (439.3), Gallipolis (427.6), Marion (446.7), Garfield Heights (464.1). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 616.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 434.9 in 2024 (-29.5%). The highest observed value was 685.7 in 2021 and the lowest 434.9 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 64.3% of reported property offenses in Columbus, against a cohort median of 84.0%. The remainder is burglary (3,703) and motor vehicle theft (4,969). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Share of the state cohort
The 28,271 Part I offenses reported here are 16.0% of the 176,831 reported across all 340 comparable Ohio cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 915,447 rather than as a uniform shift.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 14.1% of the 28,271 Part I offenses reported in Columbus for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Ohio cities — a gap of 3.5 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 counts dominate Columbus'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 very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 221.5 Census sq mi, Columbus logged 109.6 property and 18 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Columbus leans on larceny-theft at 55% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,603.
Violent offenses are only 14% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Columbus offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (221.5 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 | 24,290 | 2653.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 15,618 | 1706.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4,969 | 542.8 |
| Burglary | 3,703 | 404.5 |
| Arson | 17 | 1.9 |
| Violent Crime | 3,981 | 434.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 1,929 | 210.7 |
| Rape | 1,137 | 124.2 |
| Robbery | 803 | 87.7 |
| Murder | 112 | 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 | 911,383 | 616.9 | 3253.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 916,001 | 685.7 | 3383.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 907,196 | 536.9 | 3582.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 908,834 | 537.9 | 3342.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 915,447 | 434.9 | 2653.3 |
Columbus Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Columbus's 28,271 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 Ohio cities closest to Columbus in population. Their populations run from 65,374 to 362,762, against 915,447 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Columbus sits at 434.9/100K violent (grade D); the Ohio cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Columbus at 434.9/100K violent and 2,653.3/100K property - matched below outside Ohio (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
434.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,653.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-19.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Columbus reported 3,981 violent crimes and 24,290 property crimes, for a total of 28,271 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Columbus's violent crime rate decreased by 19.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 20.6%.
The most common crime type in Columbus is larceny-theft, accounting for 55.2% of all reported crimes (15,618 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Columbus'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 (very 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 Columbus's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Columbus, OH 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. Columbus is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (915,447 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.