Laurens, SC has a F safety grade (4/100) with a violent crime rate of 928 per 100,000, 164% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Laurens is a small municipal reporter (9,263 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with SC and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Laurens, SC is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 164% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Laurens, SC shows violent crime at 928.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,001.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 164% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Laurens's 928.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Blackville (946.9), Camden (947.9), Latta (968.5), Marion (881.9). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 928.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Laurens ranks 33 of 149 — above 116 of the 148 other South Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +123.9% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 23.6% of the 364 Part I offenses reported in Laurens for 2024, against a median of 14.9% across comparable South Carolina cities — a gap of 8.7 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 781.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 928.4 in 2024 (+18.8%). The highest observed value was 928.4 in 2024 and the lowest 633.9 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Laurens'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 10.2 Census sq mi, Laurens logged 27.2 property and 8.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Laurens's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (60% of 364 offenses; mix index 4,221).
Violent offenses are 24% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Laurens offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10.2 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 | 278 | 3001.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 219 | 2364.2 |
| Burglary | 37 | 399.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 22 | 237.5 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 86 | 928.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 78 | 842.1 |
| Rape | 4 | 43.2 |
| Robbery | 4 | 43.2 |
| 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 | 8,830 | 781.4 | 4677.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 8,835 | 781 | 4652 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 9,307 | 633.9 | 3062.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 9,239 | 736 | 2998.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 9,263 | 928.4 | 3001.2 |
Laurens Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Laurens's 364 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 Laurens in population. Their populations run from 7,795 to 10,309, against 9,263 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Laurens sits at 928.4/100K violent (grade F); the South Carolina cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Laurens reported 86 violent crimes and 278 property crimes, for a total of 364 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Laurens's violent crime rate increased by 26.1%, and the property crime rate increased by 0.1%.
The most common crime type in Laurens is larceny-theft, accounting for 60.2% of all reported crimes (219 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Laurens 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 Laurens's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Laurens, SC rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Laurens, 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. Laurens is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (9,263 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.