Harlan, KY has a B safety grade (67/100) with a violent crime rate of 276 per 100,000, 22% below the national average.
Harlan's UCR row covers a small municipal population (1,814). Rates below are per 100,000 and sit next to KY and U.S. averages.
Harlan, KY carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 22% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Harlan, KY shows violent crime at 275.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 661.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 22% 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
Harlan earns a B safety grade: violent crime runs 22% below the U.S. average, placing it higher-crime than most U.S. cities.
Based on 5 reported violent incidents in a population of 1,814. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Small-count caution
Harlan reported 5 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 1,814. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Position in the state cohort
At 275.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Harlan ranks 10 of 231 — above 221 of the 230 other Kentucky cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +315.1% against the cohort median of 66.4. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 29.4% of the 17 Part I offenses reported in Harlan for 2024, against a median of 8.0% across comparable Kentucky cities — a gap of 21.4 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Harlan's 275.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Oak Grove (275.5), Falmouth (271.5), Paducah (270.4), Covington (287.9). 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 41.7% of reported property offenses in Harlan, against a cohort median of 72.3%. The remainder is burglary (4) and motor vehicle theft (3). 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 202.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 275.6 in 2024 (+36.0%). The highest observed value was 275.6 in 2024 and the lowest 54.4 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Harlan'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.
Based on 5 reported violent incidents in a population of 1,814. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
On a small municipal row, small denominators make rates sensitive to a handful of incidents. Figures are reported totals, not neighbourhood advice.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 12 | 661.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 5 | 275.6 |
| Burglary | 4 | 220.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 3 | 165.4 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 5 | 275.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3 | 165.4 |
| Rape | 1 | 55.1 |
| Robbery | 1 | 55.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 1,480 | 202.7 | 1081.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 1,447 | 69.1 | 1520.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 1,679 | 178.7 | 1667.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 1,839 | 54.4 | 1033.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 1,814 | 275.6 | 661.5 |
Harlan's crime figures on this page originate from Harlan 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 Kentucky cities closest to Harlan in population. Their populations run from 1,720 to 1,882, against 1,814 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Kentucky cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Harlan's 275.6/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Micro-municipal read: Harlan's FBI UCR Table 8 row (2024) is the only source for the rates above.
With a small population base, per-100,000 rates amplify sparse counts. Incomplete submissions are excluded from rankings. See FBI.gov UCR for the raw Table 8 file.
Disclaimer (small municipal): small-base rates are especially easy to misread. Informational only - not advice. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Micro-municipal rate methodology for how Harlan's small municipal row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Harlan, KY 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. Harlan is scored as a small municipal UCR reporter (1,814 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.