Dewey Beach, DE has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 4434 per 100,000, 1160% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small municipal
Dewey Beach's UCR row covers a small municipal population (406). Rates below are per 100,000 and sit next to DE and U.S. averages.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Dewey Beach, DE is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 1160% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Dewey Beach, DE shows violent crime at 4,433.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 5,665 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 1160% 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 1474.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 4433.5 in 2024 (+200.7%). The highest observed value was 5289.7 in 2023 and the lowest 1474.2 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 43.9% of the 41 Part I offenses reported in Dewey Beach for 2024, against a median of 13.4% across comparable Delaware cities — a gap of 30.5 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.
Small-count caution
Dewey Beach reported 18 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 406. 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 4433.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Dewey Beach ranks 1 of 38 — above 37 of the 37 other Delaware cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +1406.8% against the cohort median of 294.2. 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 Dewey Beach's 4433.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Laurel (1451.2), Seaford (1133.6), Wilmington (1127.0), Dover (1012.8). 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 69.6% of reported property offenses in Dewey Beach, against a cohort median of 81.2%. The remainder is burglary (7) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Dewey Beach's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters 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 406. 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.
On a small municipal row, small denominators make rates sensitive to a handful of incidents. Figures are reported totals, not neighbourhood advice.
Across 0.3 Census sq mi, Dewey Beach logged 69.5 property and 54.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Dewey Beach leans on aggravated assault at 41% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,540.
Violent offenses are 44% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small municipal.
Dewey Beach offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (0.3 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 | 5665 |
| Larceny-Theft | 16 | 3940.9 |
| Burglary | 7 | 1724.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 18 | 4433.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 17 | 4187.2 |
| Rape | 1 | 246.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 407 | 1474.2 | 2948.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 419 | 4773.3 | 8830.5 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 384 | 4427.1 | 9114.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 397 | 5289.7 | 5541.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 406 | 4433.5 | 5665 |
Dewey Beach Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Dewey Beach's 41 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 Delaware cities closest to Dewey Beach in population. Their populations run from 149 to 1,093, against 406 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Dewey Beach sits at 4,433.5/100K violent (grade F); the Delaware cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Dewey Beach reported 18 violent crimes and 23 property crimes, for a total of 41 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Dewey Beach's violent crime rate decreased by 16.2%, and the property crime rate increased by 2.2%.
The most common crime type in Dewey Beach is aggravated assault, accounting for 41.5% of all reported crimes (17 incidents in 2024).
Micro-municipal read: Dewey Beach's FBI UCR Table 8 row (2024) is the only source for the rates above.
With a small population base, per-100,000 rates amplify sparse counts. Incomplete submissions are excluded from rankings. See FBI.gov UCR for the raw Table 8 file.
Disclaimer (small municipal): small-base rates are especially easy to misread. Informational only - not advice. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Micro-municipal rate methodology for how Dewey Beach's small municipal row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Dewey Beach, DE rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Dewey Beach, DE 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. Dewey Beach is scored as a small municipal UCR reporter (406 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.