Milwaukee, WI has a F safety grade (6/100) with a violent crime rate of 1431 per 100,000, 307% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 560,416 residents, Milwaukee is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against WI and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Milwaukee, WI carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 307% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Milwaukee, WI shows violent crime at 1,430.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,700.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 307% 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 1430.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Milwaukee ranks 2 of 222 — above 220 of the 221 other Wisconsin cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +1236.6% against the cohort median of 107.1. 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 34.6% of the 23,154 Part I offenses reported in Milwaukee for 2024, against a median of 12.0% across comparable Wisconsin cities — a gap of 22.6 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Milwaukee's 1430.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are West Milwaukee (977.4), Hayward (730.8), Lancaster (668.2), Adams (616.2). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 46.5% of reported property offenses in Milwaukee, against a cohort median of 88.4%. The remainder is burglary (2,175) and motor vehicle theft (5,926). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Share of the state cohort
The 23,154 Part I offenses reported here are 32.1% of the 72,145 reported across all 222 comparable Wisconsin 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 560,416 rather than as a uniform shift.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1628.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1430.9 in 2024 (-12.2%). The highest observed value was 1628.9 in 2020 and the lowest 1430.9 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Milwaukee'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 96.2 Census sq mi, Milwaukee logged 157.4 property and 83.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Milwaukee's 8 active offense types stay diversified (mix index 2,348); larceny-theft still leads at 30%.
Violent offenses are 35% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Milwaukee offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (96.2 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 | 15,135 | 2700.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 7,034 | 1255.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5,926 | 1057.4 |
| Burglary | 2,175 | 388.1 |
| Arson | 183 | 32.7 |
| Violent Crime | 8,019 | 1430.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 5,776 | 1030.7 |
| Robbery | 1,727 | 308.2 |
| Rape | 382 | 68.2 |
| Murder | 134 | 23.9 |
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 | 589,105 | 1628.9 | 2833.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 593,337 | 1619.8 | 4269.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 561,743 | 1544.8 | 3335.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 558,698 | 1502.2 | 2819.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 560,416 | 1430.9 | 2700.7 |
Milwaukee Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Milwaukee's 23,154 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 Wisconsin cities closest to Milwaukee in population. Their populations run from 66,247 to 282,045, against 560,416 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Milwaukee sits at 1,430.9/100K violent (grade F); the Wisconsin cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Milwaukee at 1,430.9/100K violent and 2,700.7/100K property - matched below outside Wisconsin (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,430.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,700.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-4.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Milwaukee reported 8,019 violent crimes and 15,135 property crimes, for a total of 23,154 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Milwaukee's violent crime rate decreased by 4.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 4.2%.
The most common crime type in Milwaukee is larceny-theft, accounting for 30.4% of all reported crimes (7,034 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Milwaukee'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 Milwaukee's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Milwaukee, WI 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. Milwaukee is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (560,416 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.