Gainesville, TX has a B safety grade (70/100) with a violent crime rate of 164 per 100,000, 54% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
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.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Gainesville, TX is close to the national middle for violent crime, and earns a B PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 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.
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.
Across 19.3 Census sq mi, Gainesville logged 15.4 property and 1.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Gainesville's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (69% of 328 offenses; mix index 5,075).
Violent offenses are only 9% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Gainesville offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (19.3 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 | 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 Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Gainesville's 328 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 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.
Gainesville sits at 163.5/100K violent (grade B); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Gainesville at 163.5/100K violent and 1,624.2/100K property - matched below outside Texas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
163.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,624.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Gainesville reported 30 violent crimes and 298 property crimes, for a total of 328 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Gainesville's violent crime rate decreased by 49.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10%.
The most common crime type in Gainesville is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.2% of all reported crimes (227 incidents in 2024).
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)
Put this to use
Put the Gainesville, TX 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. 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.