Dayton, TN has a B safety grade (63/100) with a violent crime rate of 241 per 100,000, 32% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Dayton is a small municipal reporter (7,465 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with TN and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Dayton, TN is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a B PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 32% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Dayton, TN shows violent crime at 241.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,433.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 32% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Dayton reported 18 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 7,465. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Dayton's 241.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Baxter (241.8), Millersville (238.3), Halls (245.5), White House (234.9). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 298.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 241.1 in 2024 (-19.3%). The highest observed value was 299.8 in 2021 and the lowest 160.1 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 241.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Dayton ranks 105 of 176 — above 71 of the 175 other Tennessee cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -20.4% against the cohort median of 302.8. 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 14.4% of the 125 Part I offenses reported in Dayton for 2024, against a median of 18.9% across comparable Tennessee cities — a gap of 4.5 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 86.9% of reported property offenses in Dayton, against a cohort median of 77.1%. The remainder is burglary (5) and motor vehicle theft (9). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
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.
Based on 18 reported violent incidents in a population of 7,465. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
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 8.5 Census sq mi, Dayton logged 12.6 property and 2.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Dayton's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (74% of 125 offenses; mix index 5,789).
Violent offenses are only 14% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Dayton offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (8.5 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 | 107 | 1433.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 93 | 1245.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 9 | 120.6 |
| Burglary | 5 | 67 |
| Arson | 1 | 13.4 |
| Violent Crime | 18 | 241.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 17 | 227.7 |
| Robbery | 1 | 13.4 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
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 | 7,367 | 298.6 | 2769.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,338 | 299.8 | 2234.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,170 | 251 | 3668.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,493 | 160.1 | 1654.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 7,465 | 241.1 | 1433.4 |
Dayton Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Dayton's 125 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 Dayton in population. Their populations run from 6,949 to 7,828, against 7,465 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Dayton sits at 241.1/100K violent (grade B); the Tennessee cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Dayton reported 18 violent crimes and 107 property crimes, for a total of 125 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Dayton's violent crime rate increased by 50.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 13.4%.
The most common crime type in Dayton is larceny-theft, accounting for 74.4% of all reported crimes (93 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Dayton 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 Dayton's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Dayton, TN rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Dayton, TN 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. Dayton is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (7,465 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.