Owensboro, KY has a C safety grade (40/100) with a violent crime rate of 349 per 100,000, 1% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 60,096 residents, Owensboro is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against KY and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Owensboro, KY carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 1% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Owensboro, KY shows violent crime at 349.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,917 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 1% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 349.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Owensboro ranks 3 of 231 — above 228 of the 230 other Kentucky cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +426.3% against the cohort median of 66.4. 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 Owensboro's 349.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Newport (328.4), Henderson (318.8), Shively (305.3), West Buechel (295.9). 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 273.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 349.4 in 2024 (+28.0%). The highest observed value was 371.0 in 2022 and the lowest 245.7 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Owensboro'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 21.3 Census sq mi, Owensboro logged 82.3 property and 9.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Owensboro's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (69% of 1,963 offenses; mix index 5,038).
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Owensboro offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (21.3 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 | 1,753 | 2917 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,357 | 2258.1 |
| Burglary | 203 | 337.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 193 | 321.2 |
| Arson | 11 | 18.3 |
| Violent Crime | 210 | 349.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 135 | 224.6 |
| Rape | 47 | 78.2 |
| Robbery | 27 | 44.9 |
| Murder | 1 | 1.7 |
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 | 60,430 | 273 | 3797.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 60,636 | 245.7 | 3770 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 59,839 | 371 | 3509.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 59,937 | 313.7 | 3283.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 60,096 | 349.4 | 2917 |
Owensboro Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Owensboro's 1,963 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 Kentucky cities closest to Owensboro in population. Their populations run from 30,694 to 77,503, against 60,096 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Owensboro sits at 349.4/100K violent (grade C); the Kentucky cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Owensboro at 349.4/100K violent and 2,917/100K property - matched below outside Kentucky (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
349.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,917/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+11.4% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Owensboro reported 210 violent crimes and 1,753 property crimes, for a total of 1,963 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Owensboro's violent crime rate increased by 11.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 11.2%.
The most common crime type in Owensboro is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.1% of all reported crimes (1,357 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Owensboro'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 Owensboro's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Owensboro, KY 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. Owensboro is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (60,096 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.