New Castle, IN has a A safety grade (86/100) with a violent crime rate of 75 per 100,000, 79% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
New Castle (17,306 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IN and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
New Castle, IN carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 79% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, New Castle, IN shows violent crime at 75.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 733.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 79% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
New Castle reported 13 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 17,306. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to New Castle's 75.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Butler (74.2), Crown Point (76.7), Dayton (73.2), LaGrange (72.9). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 75.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, New Castle ranks 80 of 113 — above 33 of the 112 other Indiana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -53.4% against the cohort median of 161.0. 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 9.3% of the 140 Part I offenses reported in New Castle for 2024, against a median of 13.6% across comparable Indiana cities — a gap of 4.3 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 counts dominate New Castle'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.
Based on 13 reported violent incidents in a population of 17,306. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 7.3 Census sq mi, New Castle logged 17.3 property and 1.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
New Castle's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (68% of 140 offenses; mix index 4,902).
Violent offenses are only 9% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
New Castle offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (7.3 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 | 127 | 733.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 95 | 548.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 17 | 98.2 |
| Burglary | 15 | 86.7 |
| Arson | 1 | 5.8 |
| Violent Crime | 13 | 75.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 7 | 40.4 |
| Murder | 4 | 23.1 |
| Rape | 1 | 5.8 |
| Robbery | 1 | 5.8 |
The chart omits 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Insufficient reporting | 17,004 | - | - |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 17,007 | - | - |
| 2022 | Insufficient reporting | 17,419 | - | - |
| 2023 | Insufficient reporting | 17,319 | - | - |
| 2024 | Comparable | 17,306 | 75.1 | 733.8 |
New Castle Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind New Castle's 140 reported offenses (1-year span 2024-2024).
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 Indiana cities closest to New Castle in population. Their populations run from 16,313 to 18,197, against 17,306 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
New Castle sits at 75.1/100K violent (grade A); the Indiana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
New Castle at 75.1/100K violent and 733.8/100K property - matched below outside Indiana (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
75.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
733.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, New Castle reported 13 violent crimes and 127 property crimes, for a total of 140 reported offenses.
The most common crime type in New Castle is larceny-theft, accounting for 67.9% of all reported crimes (95 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: New Castle 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 New Castle's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 New Castle, IN 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. New Castle is scored in the mid-size municipal band (17,306 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.