Gainesville, TX has a B safety grade (70/100) with a violent crime rate of 164 per 100,000, 54% below the national average.
Gainesville (18,348 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TX and national benchmarks.
Gainesville, TX carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 54% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Gainesville, TX shows violent crime at 163.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,624.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 54% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
The verdict
Gainesville earns a B safety grade: violent crime runs 54% below the U.S. average, placing it close to the national middle for violent crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 506.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 163.5 in 2024 (-67.7%). The highest observed value was 506.3 in 2020 and the lowest 163.5 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Gainesville's 163.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Oyster Creek (163.7), Tahoka (163.7), Fort Stockton (162.5), Brady (162.4). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 9.1% of the 328 Part I offenses reported in Gainesville for 2024, against a median of 14.4% across comparable Texas cities — a gap of 5.2 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 163.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Gainesville ranks 374 of 686 — above 312 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -9.1% against the cohort median of 179.9. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Gainesville'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 298 | 1624.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 227 | 1237.2 |
| Burglary | 39 | 212.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 32 | 174.4 |
| Arson | 1 | 5.5 |
| Violent Crime | 30 | 163.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 22 | 119.9 |
| Rape | 6 | 32.7 |
| Robbery | 2 | 10.9 |
| 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 | 16,986 | 506.3 | 3267.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 16,967 | 406.7 | 2510.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 17,789 | 253 | 2422.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 18,167 | 324.8 | 1805.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 18,348 | 163.5 | 1624.2 |
Gainesville's crime figures on this page originate from Gainesville Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 Texas cities closest to Gainesville in population. Their populations run from 17,487 to 19,186, against 18,348 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Texas cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Gainesville's 163.5/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Gainesville figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Gainesville's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Gainesville, TX 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. Gainesville is scored in the mid-size municipal band (18,348 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.