Nevada City, CA has a F safety grade (19/100) with a violent crime rate of 1754 per 100,000, 398% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Nevada City is a small municipal reporter (3,250 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with CA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Nevada City, CA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 398% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Nevada City, CA shows violent crime at 1,753.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,230.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 398% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 602.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1753.8 in 2024 (+191.3%). The highest observed value was 1753.8 in 2024 and the lowest 0.0 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 58.8% of the 97 Part I offenses reported in Nevada City for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 41.7 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 1753.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Nevada City ranks 6 of 458 — above 452 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +433.9% against the cohort median of 328.5. 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 Nevada City's 1753.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Sand City (1823.7), Colma (1596.5), Oakland (1925.3), Big Bear (1581.9). 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.
Violent counts are the sharper signal on Nevada City's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 2.2 Census sq mi, Nevada City logged 17.8 property and 25.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Nevada City's 2024 book concentrates in aggravated assault (59% of 97 offenses; mix index 4,322).
Violent offenses are 59% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Nevada City offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 57 | 1753.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 57 | 1753.8 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 40 | 1230.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 27 | 830.8 |
| Burglary | 7 | 215.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 6 | 184.6 |
| Arson | 2 | 61.5 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,156 | 602 | 2820 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 3,128 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,147 | 158.9 | 190.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,095 | 1227.8 | 1454 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,250 | 1753.8 | 1230.8 |
Nevada City Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Nevada City's 97 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
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 California cities closest to Nevada City in population. Their populations run from 2,739 to 3,715, against 3,250 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Nevada City sits at 1,753.8/100K violent (grade F); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Nevada City reported 57 violent crimes and 40 property crimes, for a total of 97 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Nevada City's violent crime rate increased by 42.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 15.4%.
The most common crime type in Nevada City is aggravated assault, accounting for 58.8% of all reported crimes (57 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Nevada City is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Nevada City's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Nevada City, CA 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. Nevada City is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,250 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.