Forest, MS has a F safety grade (22/100) with a violent crime rate of 707 per 100,000, 101% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Forest is a small municipal reporter (5,232 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MS and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Forest, MS is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 101% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Forest, MS shows violent crime at 707.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 879.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 101% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 44.6% of the 83 Part I offenses reported in Forest for 2024, against a median of 10.1% across comparable Mississippi cities — a gap of 34.5 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 707.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Forest ranks 3 of 63 — above 60 of the 62 other Mississippi cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +278.6% against the cohort median of 186.8. 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 Forest's 707.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Amory (630.3), Vicksburg (616.6), Magee (562.2), Water Valley (531.9). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 56.5% of reported property offenses in Forest, against a cohort median of 76.1%. The remainder is burglary (14) and motor vehicle theft (6). 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 725.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 707.2 in 2024 (-2.5%). The highest observed value was 741.2 in 2022 and the lowest 494.4 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Forest'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.
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 13.1 Census sq mi, Forest logged 3.5 property and 2.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Forest's 6 active offense types stay diversified (mix index 2,272); larceny-theft still leads at 31%.
Violent offenses are 45% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Forest offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (13.1 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 | 46 | 879.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 26 | 496.9 |
| Burglary | 14 | 267.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 6 | 114.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 37 | 707.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 22 | 420.5 |
| Robbery | 13 | 248.5 |
| Rape | 2 | 38.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,517 | 725 | 5002.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,461 | 494.4 | 2691.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,262 | 741.2 | 2584.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,287 | 529.6 | 1815.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,232 | 707.2 | 879.2 |
Forest Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Forest's 83 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 Mississippi cities closest to Forest in population. Their populations run from 3,913 to 6,435, against 5,232 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Forest sits at 707.2/100K violent (grade F); the Mississippi cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Forest reported 37 violent crimes and 46 property crimes, for a total of 83 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Forest's violent crime rate increased by 33.5%, and the property crime rate decreased by 51.6%.
The most common crime type in Forest is larceny-theft, accounting for 31.3% of all reported crimes (26 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Forest 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 Forest's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Forest, MS rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Forest, MS 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. Forest is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,232 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.