Nowata, OK has a C safety grade (55/100) with a violent crime rate of 309 per 100,000, 12% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Nowata is a small municipal reporter (3,563 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with OK and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Nowata, OK carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 12% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Nowata, OK shows violent crime at 308.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,684 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 12% 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.
Small-count caution
Nowata reported 11 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,563. 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 Nowata's 308.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Tupelo (308.6), Pawnee (308.0), Watonga (309.8), Nicoma Park (306.9). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 424.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 308.7 in 2024 (-27.3%). The highest observed value was 424.6 in 2020 and the lowest 111.4 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 308.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Nowata ranks 93 of 300 — above 207 of the 299 other Oklahoma cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +45.3% against the cohort median of 212.4. 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 Nowata'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 11 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,563. 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.
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 3.4 Census sq mi, Nowata logged 17.6 property and 3.2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Nowata's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (58% of 71 offenses; mix index 4,124).
Violent offenses are 15% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Nowata offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.4 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 | 60 | 1684 |
| Larceny-Theft | 41 | 1150.7 |
| Burglary | 17 | 477.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 56.1 |
| Arson | 2 | 56.1 |
| Violent Crime | 11 | 308.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 10 | 280.7 |
| Rape | 1 | 28.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
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 | 3,533 | 424.6 | 1811.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,527 | 368.6 | 1956.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,480 | 143.7 | 2557.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,592 | 111.4 | 1865.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,563 | 308.7 | 1684 |
Nowata Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Nowata's 71 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 Oklahoma cities closest to Nowata in population. Their populations run from 3,341 to 3,812, against 3,563 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Nowata sits at 308.7/100K violent (grade C); the Oklahoma cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Nowata reported 11 violent crimes and 60 property crimes, for a total of 71 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Nowata's violent crime rate increased by 177.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 9.7%.
The most common crime type in Nowata is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.7% of all reported crimes (41 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Nowata 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 Nowata's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Nowata, OK 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. Nowata is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,563 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.