Deer Lodge, MT has a C safety grade (47/100) with a violent crime rate of 462 per 100,000, 31% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Deer Lodge is a small municipal reporter (3,032 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MT and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Deer Lodge, MT carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 31% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Deer Lodge, MT shows violent crime at 461.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 758.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 31% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C 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 212.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 461.7 in 2024 (+117.2%). The highest observed value was 542.6 in 2022 and the lowest 212.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Deer Lodge reported 14 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,032. 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 37.8% of the 37 Part I offenses reported in Deer Lodge for 2024, against a median of 19.0% across comparable Montana 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 Deer Lodge's 461.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Sidney (464.3), Hot Springs (471.7), St. Ignatius (478.5), Wolf Point (484.1). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 461.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Deer Lodge ranks 20 of 44 — above 24 of the 43 other Montana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +35.3% against the cohort median of 341.3. 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 Deer Lodge'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 14 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,032. 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 1.6 Census sq mi, Deer Lodge logged 14.8 property and 9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Deer Lodge leans on larceny-theft at 49% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,893.
Violent offenses are 38% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Deer Lodge offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.6 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 | 23 | 758.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 18 | 593.7 |
| Burglary | 3 | 98.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 66 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 14 | 461.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 14 | 461.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 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 | 2,822 | 212.6 | 850.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,772 | 396.8 | 613.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,949 | 542.6 | 1051.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,034 | 395.5 | 1120.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,032 | 461.7 | 758.6 |
Deer Lodge Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Deer Lodge's 37 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 Montana cities closest to Deer Lodge in population. Their populations run from 2,278 to 3,677, against 3,032 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Deer Lodge sits at 461.7/100K violent (grade C); the Montana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Deer Lodge reported 14 violent crimes and 23 property crimes, for a total of 37 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Deer Lodge's violent crime rate increased by 16.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 32.3%.
The most common crime type in Deer Lodge is larceny-theft, accounting for 48.6% of all reported crimes (18 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Deer Lodge 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 Deer Lodge's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Deer Lodge, MT 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. Deer Lodge is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,032 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.