Highland Park, NJ has a B safety grade (74/100) with a violent crime rate of 151 per 100,000, 57% below the national average.
Highland Park (15,260 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then NJ and national benchmarks.
Highland Park, NJ carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 57% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Highland Park, NJ shows violent crime at 150.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,218.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 57% 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
Highland Park earns a B safety grade: violent crime runs 57% below the U.S. average, placing it close to the national middle for violent crime.
Based on 23 reported violent incidents in a population of 15,260. 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 36.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 150.7 in 2024 (+312.0%). The highest observed value was 150.7 in 2024 and the lowest 14.2 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Highland Park reported 23 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 15,260. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Highland Park's 150.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Rochelle Park Township (150.8), Lakewood Township (150.5), Secaucus (151.5), North Plainfield (151.7). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 150.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Highland Park ranks 104 of 417 — above 313 of the 416 other New Jersey cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +121.2% against the cohort median of 68.1. 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 11.0% of the 209 Part I offenses reported in Highland Park for 2024, against a median of 7.1% across comparable New Jersey cities — a gap of 3.9 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.
Property counts dominate Highland Park'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 23 reported violent incidents in a population of 15,260. 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.
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 | 186 | 1218.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 161 | 1055 |
| Burglary | 17 | 111.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 8 | 52.4 |
| Arson | 1 | 6.6 |
| Violent Crime | 23 | 150.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 16 | 104.8 |
| Rape | 4 | 26.2 |
| Robbery | 3 | 19.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 13,666 | 36.6 | 1090.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 14,126 | 14.2 | 601.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 14,914 | 134.1 | 871.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 15,018 | 79.9 | 1351.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 15,260 | 150.7 | 1218.9 |
Highland Park's crime figures on this page originate from Highland Park 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 New Jersey cities closest to Highland Park in population. Their populations run from 14,968 to 15,451, against 15,260 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These New Jersey cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Highland Park's 150.7/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Highland Park 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 Highland Park's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Highland Park, NJ 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. Highland Park is scored in the mid-size municipal band (15,260 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.