Lake City, SC has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 1802 per 100,000, 412% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Lake City is a small municipal reporter (5,937 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with SC and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Lake City, SC is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 412% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Lake City, SC shows violent crime at 1,802.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 4,749.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 412% 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 154.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1802.3 in 2024 (+1067.3%). The highest observed value was 2068.6 in 2022 and the lowest 154.4 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 1802.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Lake City ranks 8 of 149 — above 141 of the 148 other South Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +334.7% against the cohort median of 414.6. 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 Lake City's 1802.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Hartsville (1745.8), Bamberg (1723.6), Pageland (1949.1), Mullins (1586.5). 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 27.5% of the 389 Part I offenses reported in Lake City for 2024, against a median of 14.9% across comparable South Carolina cities — a gap of 12.6 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.
Property counts dominate Lake City'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.
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 5.4 Census sq mi, Lake City logged 51.8 property and 19.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Lake City leans on larceny-theft at 53% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,691.
Violent offenses are 28% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Lake City offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.4 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 | 282 | 4749.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 207 | 3486.6 |
| Burglary | 51 | 859 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 24 | 404.2 |
| Arson | 2 | 33.7 |
| Violent Crime | 107 | 1802.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 99 | 1667.5 |
| Robbery | 4 | 67.4 |
| Rape | 3 | 50.5 |
| Murder | 1 | 16.8 |
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 | 6,477 | 154.4 | 370.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,422 | 1526 | 4360 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,946 | 2068.6 | 3784.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,975 | 1824.3 | 4301.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,937 | 1802.3 | 4749.9 |
Lake City Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Lake City's 389 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 South Carolina cities closest to Lake City in population. Their populations run from 5,212 to 6,430, against 5,937 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Lake City sits at 1,802.3/100K violent (grade F); the South Carolina cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Lake City reported 107 violent crimes and 282 property crimes, for a total of 389 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Lake City's violent crime rate decreased by 1.2%, and the property crime rate increased by 10.4%.
The most common crime type in Lake City is larceny-theft, accounting for 53.2% of all reported crimes (207 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Lake City 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 Lake City's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Lake City, SC rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Lake City, SC 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. Lake City is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,937 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.