Muscle Shoals, AL has a C safety grade (56/100) with a violent crime rate of 183 per 100,000, 48% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Muscle Shoals (17,501 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then AL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Muscle Shoals, AL carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 48% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Muscle Shoals, AL shows violent crime at 182.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,982.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 48% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 81.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 182.8 in 2024 (+124.6%). The highest observed value was 372.4 in 2022 and the lowest 81.4 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Muscle Shoals's 182.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Robertsdale (182.8), Headland (183.3), Newton (180.8), Oneonta (185.4). 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 5.8% of the 554 Part I offenses reported in Muscle Shoals for 2024, against a median of 13.9% across comparable Alabama cities — a gap of 8.1 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 90.0% of reported property offenses in Muscle Shoals, against a cohort median of 74.2%. The remainder is burglary (20) and motor vehicle theft (32). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 182.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Muscle Shoals ranks 149 of 263 — above 114 of the 262 other Alabama cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -15.8% against the cohort median of 217.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Muscle Shoals'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 16.9 Census sq mi, Muscle Shoals logged 30.9 property and 1.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Muscle Shoals's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (85% of 554 offenses; mix index 7,261).
Violent offenses are only 6% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Muscle Shoals offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (16.9 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 | 522 | 2982.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 470 | 2685.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 32 | 182.8 |
| Burglary | 20 | 114.3 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 32 | 182.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 22 | 125.7 |
| Rape | 7 | 40 |
| Robbery | 3 | 17.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 14,737 | 81.4 | 1099.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 15,051 | 232.5 | 3428.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 16,917 | 372.4 | 2512.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 17,368 | 270.6 | 2850.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 17,501 | 182.8 | 2982.7 |
Muscle Shoals Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Muscle Shoals's 554 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 Alabama cities closest to Muscle Shoals in population. Their populations run from 16,131 to 18,747, against 17,501 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Muscle Shoals sits at 182.8/100K violent (grade C); the Alabama cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Muscle Shoals at 182.8/100K violent and 2,982.7/100K property - matched below outside Alabama (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
182.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,982.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Muscle Shoals reported 32 violent crimes and 522 property crimes, for a total of 554 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Muscle Shoals's violent crime rate decreased by 32.4%, and the property crime rate increased by 4.7%.
The most common crime type in Muscle Shoals is larceny-theft, accounting for 84.8% of all reported crimes (470 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Muscle Shoals 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 Muscle Shoals's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Muscle Shoals, AL 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. Muscle Shoals is scored in the mid-size municipal band (17,501 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.