Decorah, IA has a A safety grade (86/100) with a violent crime rate of 119 per 100,000, 66% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Decorah is a small municipal reporter (7,578 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Decorah, IA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 66% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Decorah, IA shows violent crime at 118.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 224.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 66% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A 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 26.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 118.8 in 2024 (+346.3%). The highest observed value was 168.1 in 2023 and the lowest 26.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Decorah reported 9 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 7,578. 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 34.6% of the 26 Part I offenses reported in Decorah for 2024, against a median of 15.8% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 18.8 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Decorah's 118.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Marion (122.6), Carlisle (114.1), Osage (114.1), Denison (124.4). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 64.7% of reported property offenses in Decorah, against a cohort median of 76.8%. The remainder is burglary (4) and motor vehicle theft (2). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 118.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Decorah ranks 89 of 148 — above 59 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -18.8% against the cohort median of 146.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Decorah'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 9 reported violent incidents in a population of 7,578. 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 7.2 Census sq mi, Decorah logged 2.3 property and 1.2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Decorah leans on larceny-theft at 42% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,047.
Violent offenses are 35% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Decorah offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (7.2 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 | 17 | 224.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 11 | 145.2 |
| Burglary | 4 | 52.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 26.4 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 9 | 118.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 8 | 105.6 |
| Rape | 1 | 13.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 7,516 | 26.6 | 558.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,422 | 94.3 | 390.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,764 | 154.6 | 128.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,734 | 168.1 | 271.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 7,578 | 118.8 | 224.3 |
Decorah Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Decorah's 26 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 Iowa cities closest to Decorah in population. Their populations run from 7,177 to 8,022, against 7,578 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Decorah sits at 118.8/100K violent (grade A); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Decorah reported 9 violent crimes and 17 property crimes, for a total of 26 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Decorah's violent crime rate decreased by 29.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 17.4%.
The most common crime type in Decorah is larceny-theft, accounting for 42.3% of all reported crimes (11 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Decorah 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 Decorah's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Decorah, IA 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. Decorah is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (7,578 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.