Fort Smith, AR has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 842 per 100,000, 139% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 89,977 residents, Fort Smith is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against AR and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Fort Smith, AR carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 139% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Fort Smith, AR shows violent crime at 842.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,684.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 139% 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 842.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Fort Smith ranks 22 of 204 — above 182 of the 203 other Arkansas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +175.1% against the cohort median of 306.2. 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 Fort Smith's 842.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Lonoke (840.5), Texarkana (822.7), Pangburn (803.2), Magnolia (788.7). 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 1170.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 842.4 in 2024 (-28.0%). The highest observed value was 1170.6 in 2020 and the lowest 842.4 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Fort Smith'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 64.2 Census sq mi, Fort Smith logged 51.6 property and 11.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Fort Smith's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (64% of 4,073 offenses; mix index 4,506).
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Fort Smith offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (64.2 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 | 3,315 | 3684.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 2,613 | 2904.1 |
| Burglary | 420 | 466.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 282 | 313.4 |
| Arson | 10 | 11.1 |
| Violent Crime | 758 | 842.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 618 | 686.8 |
| Rape | 81 | 90 |
| Robbery | 59 | 65.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 88,071 | 1170.6 | 5552.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 87,912 | 1136.4 | 5609 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 90,013 | 1045.4 | 4961.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 90,417 | 1023 | 4188.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 89,977 | 842.4 | 3684.3 |
Fort Smith Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Fort Smith's 4,073 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 Arkansas cities closest to Fort Smith in population. Their populations run from 38,524 to 104,089, against 89,977 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Fort Smith sits at 842.4/100K violent (grade F); the Arkansas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Fort Smith at 842.4/100K violent and 3,684.3/100K property - matched below outside Arkansas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
842.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,684.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-17.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Fort Smith reported 758 violent crimes and 3,315 property crimes, for a total of 4,073 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Fort Smith's violent crime rate decreased by 17.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 12%.
The most common crime type in Fort Smith is larceny-theft, accounting for 64.2% of all reported crimes (2,613 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Fort Smith'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 Fort Smith's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Fort Smith, AR 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. Fort Smith is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (89,977 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.