Lewiston, ME has a B safety grade (62/100) with a violent crime rate of 245 per 100,000, 31% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Lewiston (38,850 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then ME and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Lewiston, ME is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a B PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 31% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Lewiston, ME shows violent crime at 244.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,529 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 31% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 244.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Lewiston ranks 4 of 101 — above 97 of the 100 other Maine cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +319.9% against the cohort median of 58.2. 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 Lewiston's 244.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Augusta (250.5), Mechanic Falls (222.7), Portland (266.9), Presque Isle (219.9). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 13.8% of the 689 Part I offenses reported in Lewiston for 2024, against a median of 5.6% across comparable Maine cities — a gap of 8.2 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 268.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 244.5 in 2024 (-8.8%). The highest observed value was 321.4 in 2023 and the lowest 244.5 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Lewiston'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 34.1 Census sq mi, Lewiston logged 17.4 property and 2.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Lewiston's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (70% of 689 offenses; mix index 5,135).
Violent offenses are only 14% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Lewiston offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (34.1 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 | 594 | 1529 |
| Larceny-Theft | 484 | 1245.8 |
| Burglary | 64 | 164.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 46 | 118.4 |
| Arson | 7 | 18 |
| Violent Crime | 95 | 244.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 45 | 115.8 |
| Rape | 26 | 66.9 |
| Robbery | 23 | 59.2 |
| Murder | 1 | 2.6 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 36,186 | 268.1 | 1815.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 36,191 | 268 | 1644.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 36,488 | 274.1 | 1962.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 39,209 | 321.4 | 1696 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 38,850 | 244.5 | 1529 |
Lewiston Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Lewiston's 689 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 Maine cities closest to Lewiston in population. Their populations run from 21,144 to 31,598, against 38,850 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Lewiston sits at 244.5/100K violent (grade B); the Maine cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Lewiston at 244.5/100K violent and 1,529/100K property - matched below outside Maine (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
244.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,529/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-23.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Lewiston reported 95 violent crimes and 594 property crimes, for a total of 689 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Lewiston's violent crime rate decreased by 23.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 9.8%.
The most common crime type in Lewiston is larceny-theft, accounting for 70.2% of all reported crimes (484 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Lewiston 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 Lewiston's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Lewiston, ME rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Lewiston, ME 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. Lewiston is scored in the mid-size municipal band (38,850 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.