Owosso, MI has a D safety grade (35/100) with a violent crime rate of 564 per 100,000, 60% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Owosso (14,543 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MI and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Owosso, MI is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a D PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 60% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Owosso, MI shows violent crime at 563.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,072.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 60% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 563.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Owosso ranks 42 of 366 — above 324 of the 365 other Michigan cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +201.6% against the cohort median of 187.0. 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 Owosso's 563.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Bay City (564.1), Mattawan (566.0), Croswell (567.4), Carrollton Township (556.2). 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 34.5% of the 238 Part I offenses reported in Owosso for 2024, against a median of 16.7% across comparable Michigan cities — a gap of 17.8 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 689.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 563.8 in 2024 (-18.2%). The highest observed value was 788.7 in 2022 and the lowest 563.8 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Owosso'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 5.2 Census sq mi, Owosso logged 29.7 property and 15.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Owosso leans on larceny-theft at 50% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,399.
Violent offenses are 34% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Owosso offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 156 | 1072.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 118 | 811.4 |
| Burglary | 30 | 206.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 8 | 55 |
| Arson | 3 | 20.6 |
| Violent Crime | 82 | 563.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 64 | 440.1 |
| Rape | 16 | 110 |
| Robbery | 2 | 13.8 |
| Murder | 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 | 14,363 | 689.3 | 1489.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 14,258 | 729.4 | 1767.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 14,581 | 788.7 | 1399.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 14,595 | 698.9 | 1555.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 14,543 | 563.8 | 1072.7 |
Owosso Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Owosso's 238 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 Michigan cities closest to Owosso in population. Their populations run from 14,040 to 14,864, against 14,543 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Owosso sits at 563.8/100K violent (grade D); the Michigan cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Owosso at 563.8/100K violent and 1,072.7/100K property - matched below outside Michigan (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
563.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,072.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Owosso reported 82 violent crimes and 156 property crimes, for a total of 238 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Owosso's violent crime rate decreased by 19.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 31%.
The most common crime type in Owosso is larceny-theft, accounting for 49.6% of all reported crimes (118 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Owosso 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 Owosso's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Owosso, MI rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Owosso, MI FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Owosso is scored in the mid-size municipal band (14,543 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.