Decatur, AL has a F safety grade (19/100) with a violent crime rate of 607 per 100,000, 72% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 58,514 residents, Decatur is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against AL and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Decatur, AL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 72% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Decatur, AL shows violent crime at 606.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,308.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 72% 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 163.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 606.7 in 2024 (+270.1%). The highest observed value was 606.7 in 2024 and the lowest 94.0 in 2021. 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 Decatur's 606.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Jacksonville (607.6), Montgomery (594.6), Selma (619.7), Eutaw (590.4). 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 606.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Decatur ranks 46 of 263 — above 217 of the 262 other Alabama cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +184.1% against the cohort median of 213.5. 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 20.8% of the 1,706 Part I offenses reported in Decatur for 2024, against a median of 13.8% across comparable Alabama cities — a gap of 7.0 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.
Property counts dominate Decatur'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 54.6 Census sq mi, Decatur logged 24.7 property and 6.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Decatur's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (63% of 1,706 offenses; mix index 4,435).
Violent offenses are 21% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Decatur offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (54.6 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 | 1,351 | 2308.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,073 | 1833.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 165 | 282 |
| Burglary | 113 | 193.1 |
| Arson | 112 | 191.4 |
| Violent Crime | 355 | 606.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 292 | 499 |
| Rape | 32 | 54.7 |
| Robbery | 26 | 44.4 |
| Murder | 5 | 8.5 |
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 | 54,295 | 163.9 | 1370.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 54,240 | 94 | 1157.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 57,831 | 432.3 | 2906.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 58,005 | 496.5 | 2668.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 58,514 | 606.7 | 2308.8 |
Decatur Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Decatur's 1,706 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 Alabama cities closest to Decatur in population. Their populations run from 34,349 to 71,318, against 58,514 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Decatur sits at 606.7/100K violent (grade F); the Alabama cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Decatur at 606.7/100K violent and 2,308.8/100K property - matched below outside Alabama (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
606.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,308.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+22.2% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Decatur reported 355 violent crimes and 1,351 property crimes, for a total of 1,706 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Decatur's violent crime rate increased by 22.2%, and the property crime rate decreased by 13.5%.
The most common crime type in Decatur is larceny-theft, accounting for 62.9% of all reported crimes (1,073 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Decatur'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 Decatur's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Decatur, AL 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. Decatur is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (58,514 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.