Iowa, LA has a F safety grade (13/100) with a violent crime rate of 1429 per 100,000, 306% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Iowa is a small municipal reporter (3,009 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with LA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Iowa, LA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 306% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Iowa, LA shows violent crime at 1,429 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,894.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 306% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F 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 816.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1429.0 in 2024 (+75.0%). The highest observed value was 1634.1 in 2021 and the lowest 816.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 43.0% of the 100 Part I offenses reported in Iowa for 2024, against a median of 18.4% across comparable Louisiana cities — a gap of 24.6 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 1429.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Iowa ranks 7 of 66 — above 59 of the 65 other Louisiana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +237.1% against the cohort median of 423.9. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Iowa's 1429.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Bastrop (1421.7), Opelousas (1369.3), Port Allen (1312.6), Winnfield (1294.7). 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.
Iowa's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
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.
Across 3.4 Census sq mi, Iowa logged 16.8 property and 12.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Iowa's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (47% of 100 offenses; mix index 4,026).
Violent offenses are 43% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Iowa offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.4 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 | 57 | 1894.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 47 | 1562 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 6 | 199.4 |
| Burglary | 4 | 132.9 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 43 | 1429 |
| Aggravated Assault | 42 | 1395.8 |
| Rape | 1 | 33.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,184 | 816.6 | 3203.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,121 | 1634.1 | 2307 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,972 | 1211.3 | 2288 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,983 | 1508.5 | 1441.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,009 | 1429 | 1894.3 |
Iowa Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Iowa's 100 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 Louisiana cities closest to Iowa in population. Their populations run from 2,557 to 3,862, against 3,009 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Iowa sits at 1,429/100K violent (grade F); the Louisiana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Iowa reported 43 violent crimes and 57 property crimes, for a total of 100 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Iowa's violent crime rate decreased by 5.3%, and the property crime rate increased by 31.4%.
The most common crime type in Iowa is larceny-theft, accounting for 47.0% of all reported crimes (47 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Iowa 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 Iowa's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Iowa, LA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Iowa, LA 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. Iowa is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,009 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.