Highlands, NJ has a A safety grade (84/100) with a violent crime rate of 118 per 100,000, 67% below the national average.
Highlands is a small municipal reporter (4,240 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with NJ and U.S. context.
Highlands, NJ carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 67% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Highlands, NJ shows violent crime at 117.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 495.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 67% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
The verdict
Highlands earns an A safety grade: violent crime runs 67% below the U.S. average, placing it close to the national middle for violent crime.
Based on 5 reported violent incidents in a population of 4,240. 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
Highlands reported 5 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 4,240. 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 64.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 117.9 in 2024 (+84.0%). The highest observed value was 171.9 in 2022 and the lowest 0.0 in 2021. 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 Highlands's 117.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Franklin Township, Gloucester County (117.9), South Plainfield (117.9), Montclair (118.1), Winslow Township (117.2). 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 47.6% of reported property offenses in Highlands, against a cohort median of 82.1%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (11). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 19.2% of the 26 Part I offenses reported in Highlands for 2024, against a median of 7.1% across comparable New Jersey cities — a gap of 12.1 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 117.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Highlands ranks 141 of 417 — above 276 of the 416 other New Jersey cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +73.0% 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.
Property counts dominate Highlands'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 4,240. 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-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 21 | 495.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 11 | 259.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 10 | 235.8 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 5 | 117.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 5 | 117.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 4,682 | 64.1 | 469.9 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 4,662 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,654 | 171.9 | 257.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,624 | 108.1 | 389.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,240 | 117.9 | 495.3 |
Highlands's crime figures on this page originate from Highlands Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the New Jersey cities closest to Highlands in population. Their populations run from 4,068 to 4,386, against 4,240 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 Highlands's 117.9/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Highlands is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Highlands's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Highlands, 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. Highlands is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,240 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.