Dayton, OH has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 1339 per 100,000, 280% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 134,857 residents, Dayton is a 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
Dayton, OH carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 280% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Dayton, OH shows violent crime at 1,339.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 4,334.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 280% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 1339.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Dayton ranks 5 of 340 — above 335 of the 339 other Ohio cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +1084.2% 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 Dayton's 1339.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Springfield (1371.1), East Cleveland (1409.7), Lockland (1131.1), Canton (1121.9). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 49.5% of reported property offenses in Dayton, against a cohort median of 84.0%. The remainder is burglary (1,159) and motor vehicle theft (1,794). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 23.6% of the 7,651 Part I offenses reported in Dayton for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Ohio cities — a gap of 13.0 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1131.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1339.2 in 2024 (+18.4%). The highest observed value was 1339.2 in 2024 and the lowest 1041.7 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Dayton'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 large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 55.8 Census sq mi, Dayton logged 104.7 property and 32.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Dayton leans on larceny-theft at 38% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,507.
Violent offenses are 24% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Dayton offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (55.8 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 | 5,845 | 4334.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 2,892 | 2144.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1,794 | 1330.3 |
| Burglary | 1,159 | 859.4 |
| Arson | 46 | 34.1 |
| Violent Crime | 1,806 | 1339.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 1,268 | 940.3 |
| Robbery | 341 | 252.9 |
| Rape | 157 | 116.4 |
| Murder | 40 | 29.7 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 140,193 | 1131.3 | 3933.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 139,671 | 1041.7 | 3658.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 137,084 | 1175.2 | 4338.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 135,181 | 1182.1 | 4763.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 134,857 | 1339.2 | 4334.2 |
Dayton Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Dayton's 7,651 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 Dayton in population. Their populations run from 58,850 to 188,223, against 134,857 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Dayton sits at 1,339.2/100K violent (grade F); the Ohio cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Dayton at 1,339.2/100K violent and 4,334.2/100K property - matched below outside Ohio (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,339.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
4,334.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+13.3% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Dayton reported 1,806 violent crimes and 5,845 property crimes, for a total of 7,651 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Dayton's violent crime rate increased by 13.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 9%.
The most common crime type in Dayton is larceny-theft, accounting for 37.8% of all reported crimes (2,892 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Dayton'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 (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 Dayton's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Dayton, 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. Dayton is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (134,857 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.