Dowagiac, MI has a F safety grade (1/100) with a violent crime rate of 689 per 100,000, 96% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Dowagiac is a small municipal reporter (5,660 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MI and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Dowagiac, MI is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 96% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Dowagiac, MI shows violent crime at 689 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,427.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 96% 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 689.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Dowagiac ranks 27 of 366 — above 339 of the 365 other Michigan cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +268.6% against the cohort median of 187.0. 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 Dowagiac's 689.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Wayne (692.7), Lincoln Park (678.6), Genesee Township (678.3), South Haven (672.8). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 867.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 689.0 in 2024 (-20.6%). The highest observed value was 867.6 in 2020 and the lowest 649.2 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 89.7% of reported property offenses in Dowagiac, against a cohort median of 79.7%. The remainder is burglary (6) and motor vehicle theft (14). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Dowagiac'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.
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 4.5 Census sq mi, Dowagiac logged 43.6 property and 8.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Dowagiac's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (75% of 233 offenses; mix index 5,839).
Violent offenses are 17% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Dowagiac offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.5 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 | 194 | 3427.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 174 | 3074.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 14 | 247.3 |
| Burglary | 6 | 106 |
| Arson | 3 | 53 |
| Violent Crime | 39 | 689 |
| Aggravated Assault | 34 | 600.7 |
| Rape | 5 | 88.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,648 | 867.6 | 2956.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,536 | 722.5 | 3251.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,591 | 787 | 3648.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,545 | 649.2 | 3192.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,660 | 689 | 3427.6 |
Dowagiac Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Dowagiac's 233 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 Michigan cities closest to Dowagiac in population. Their populations run from 5,383 to 5,932, against 5,660 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Dowagiac sits at 689/100K violent (grade F); the Michigan cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Dowagiac reported 39 violent crimes and 194 property crimes, for a total of 233 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Dowagiac's violent crime rate increased by 6.1%, and the property crime rate increased by 7.4%.
The most common crime type in Dowagiac is larceny-theft, accounting for 74.7% of all reported crimes (174 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Dowagiac 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 Dowagiac's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Dowagiac, MI rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Dowagiac, MI 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. Dowagiac is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,660 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.