Des Moines, IA has a F safety grade (3/100) with a violent crime rate of 703 per 100,000, 100% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 209,245 residents, Des Moines is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against IA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Des Moines, IA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 100% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Des Moines, IA shows violent crime at 703 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,126.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 100% 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 703.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Des Moines ranks 3 of 148 — above 145 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +392.6% against the cohort median of 142.7. 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 Des Moines's 703.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Shenandoah (656.8), Sabula (612.2), Davenport (581.4), Albia (576.9). 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.
Share of the state cohort
The 8,013 Part I offenses reported here are 18.5% of the 43,207 reported across all 148 comparable Iowa cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 209,245 rather than as a uniform shift.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 68.5% of reported property offenses in Des Moines, against a cohort median of 76.8%. The remainder is burglary (968) and motor vehicle theft (1,092). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 709.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 703.0 in 2024 (-0.9%). The highest observed value was 713.1 in 2023 and the lowest 482.5 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Des Moines'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 88.2 Census sq mi, Des Moines logged 74.2 property and 16.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Des Moines leans on larceny-theft at 56% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,690.
Violent offenses are 18% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Des Moines offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (88.2 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 | 6,542 | 3126.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 4,482 | 2142 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1,092 | 521.9 |
| Burglary | 968 | 462.6 |
| Arson | 34 | 16.2 |
| Violent Crime | 1,471 | 703 |
| Aggravated Assault | 1,198 | 572.5 |
| Robbery | 157 | 75 |
| Rape | 107 | 51.1 |
| Murder | 9 | 4.3 |
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 | 215,290 | 709.3 | 3947.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 213,060 | 631.7 | 3191.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 210,376 | 482.5 | 2209.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 209,658 | 713.1 | 3398.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 209,245 | 703 | 3126.5 |
Des Moines Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Des Moines's 8,013 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 Des Moines in population. Their populations run from 65,426 to 135,363, against 209,245 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Des Moines sits at 703/100K violent (grade F); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Des Moines at 703/100K violent and 3,126.5/100K property - matched below outside Iowa (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
703/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,126.5/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-1.4% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Des Moines reported 1,471 violent crimes and 6,542 property crimes, for a total of 8,013 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Des Moines's violent crime rate decreased by 1.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 8%.
The most common crime type in Des Moines is larceny-theft, accounting for 55.9% of all reported crimes (4,482 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Des Moines'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 Des Moines's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Des Moines, 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. Des Moines is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (209,245 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.