Memphis, TN has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 2501 per 100,000, 611% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 613,207 residents, Memphis is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against TN and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Memphis, TN carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 611% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Memphis, TN shows violent crime at 2,501.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 6,899 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 611% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 2501.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Memphis ranks 1 of 176 — above 175 of the 175 other Tennessee cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +738.2% against the cohort median of 298.4. 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 Memphis's 2501.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Ripley (1742.6), Rocky Top (1522.5), Bolivar (1269.8), Dyersburg (1256.5). 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.
Share of the state cohort
The 57,643 Part I offenses reported here are 35.9% of the 160,524 reported across all 176 comparable Tennessee cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 613,207 rather than as a uniform shift.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.6% of the 57,643 Part I offenses reported in Memphis for 2024, against a median of 18.7% across comparable Tennessee cities — a gap of 7.9 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 63.8% of reported property offenses in Memphis, against a cohort median of 77.1%. The remainder is burglary (5,616) and motor vehicle theft (9,711). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 2368.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 2501.3 in 2024 (+5.6%). The highest observed value was 2616.1 in 2023 and the lowest 2368.1 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Memphis'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.
On a very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 289.8 Census sq mi, Memphis logged 146 property and 52.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Memphis leans on larceny-theft at 47% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,056.
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Memphis offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (289.8 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 | 42,305 | 6899 |
| Larceny-Theft | 26,978 | 4399.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 9,711 | 1583.6 |
| Burglary | 5,616 | 915.8 |
| Arson | 343 | 55.9 |
| Violent Crime | 15,338 | 2501.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 12,522 | 2042.1 |
| Robbery | 2,138 | 348.7 |
| Rape | 429 | 70 |
| Murder | 249 | 40.6 |
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 | 650,937 | 2368.1 | 5655.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 649,444 | 2437.3 | 5338.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 624,944 | 2413.8 | 7248.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 616,061 | 2616.1 | 8676.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 613,207 | 2501.3 | 6899 |
Memphis Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Memphis's 57,643 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 Tennessee cities closest to Memphis in population. Their populations run from 68,286 to 698,987, against 613,207 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Memphis sits at 2,501.3/100K violent (grade F); the Tennessee cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Memphis at 2,501.3/100K violent and 6,899/100K property - matched below outside Tennessee (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
2,501.3/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
6,899/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-4.4% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Memphis reported 15,338 violent crimes and 42,305 property crimes, for a total of 57,643 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Memphis's violent crime rate decreased by 4.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 20.5%.
The most common crime type in Memphis is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.8% of all reported crimes (26,978 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Memphis's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (very large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Memphis's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Memphis, TN 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. Memphis is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (613,207 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.