Missoula, MT has a F safety grade (11/100) with a violent crime rate of 597 per 100,000, 70% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 78,911 residents, Missoula is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against MT and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Missoula, MT carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 70% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Missoula, MT shows violent crime at 596.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,629.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 70% 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 Missoula's 596.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Livingston (596.2), Havre (578.9), Great Falls (574.4), Troy (641.7). 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 596.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Missoula ranks 7 of 44 — above 37 of the 43 other Montana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +74.9% against the cohort median of 341.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Share of the state cohort
The 3,335 Part I offenses reported here are 20.4% of the 16,374 reported across all 44 comparable Montana 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 78,911 rather than as a uniform shift.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 14.1% of the 3,335 Part I offenses reported in Missoula for 2024, against a median of 19.5% across comparable Montana cities — a gap of 5.4 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 525.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 596.9 in 2024 (+13.5%). The highest observed value was 646.1 in 2021 and the lowest 525.7 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Missoula'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 large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 35 Census sq mi, Missoula logged 81.8 property and 13.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Missoula's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (74% of 3,335 offenses; mix index 5,608).
Violent offenses are only 14% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Missoula offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (35 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 | 2,864 | 3629.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 2,453 | 3108.6 |
| Burglary | 255 | 323.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 156 | 197.7 |
| Arson | 21 | 26.6 |
| Violent Crime | 471 | 596.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 349 | 442.3 |
| Rape | 84 | 106.4 |
| Robbery | 36 | 45.6 |
| Murder | 2 | 2.5 |
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 | 76,468 | 525.7 | 3648.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 77,852 | 646.1 | 3281.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 75,705 | 638 | 3567.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 78,269 | 560.9 | 3735.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 78,911 | 596.9 | 3629.4 |
Missoula Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Missoula's 3,335 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 Montana cities closest to Missoula in population. Their populations run from 9,328 to 122,105, against 78,911 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Missoula sits at 596.9/100K violent (grade F); the Montana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Missoula at 596.9/100K violent and 3,629.4/100K property - matched below outside Montana (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
596.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,629.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+6.4% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Missoula reported 471 violent crimes and 2,864 property crimes, for a total of 3,335 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Missoula's violent crime rate increased by 6.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 2.8%.
The most common crime type in Missoula is larceny-theft, accounting for 73.6% of all reported crimes (2,453 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Missoula'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 (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 Missoula's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Missoula, MT 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. Missoula is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (78,911 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.