Paw Paw, MI has a F safety grade (23/100) with a violent crime rate of 471 per 100,000, 34% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Paw Paw is a small municipal reporter (3,398 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MI and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Paw Paw, MI is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 34% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Paw Paw, MI shows violent crime at 470.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 4,414.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 34% 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.
Small-count caution
Paw Paw reported 16 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,398. 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 Paw Paw's 470.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Wyoming (471.1), Cadillac (468.9), Reed City (473.9), Niles (475.5). 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 470.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Paw Paw ranks 59 of 366 — above 307 of the 365 other Michigan cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +151.9% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 387.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 470.9 in 2024 (+21.4%). The highest observed value was 863.9 in 2022 and the lowest 360.6 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 9.6% of the 166 Part I offenses reported in Paw Paw for 2024, against a median of 16.8% across comparable Michigan cities — a gap of 7.1 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 91.3% of reported property offenses in Paw Paw, against a cohort median of 79.7%. The remainder is burglary (6) and motor vehicle theft (7). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Paw Paw'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 16 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,398. 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 2.7 Census sq mi, Paw Paw logged 56.3 property and 6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Paw Paw's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (83% of 166 offenses; mix index 6,891).
Violent offenses are only 10% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Paw Paw offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.7 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 | 150 | 4414.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 137 | 4031.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 7 | 206 |
| Burglary | 6 | 176.6 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 16 | 470.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 10 | 294.3 |
| Rape | 6 | 176.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,351 | 387.9 | 4148 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,328 | 360.6 | 3936.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,357 | 863.9 | 3693.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,411 | 615.7 | 4602.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,398 | 470.9 | 4414.4 |
Paw Paw Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Paw Paw's 166 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 Paw Paw in population. Their populations run from 3,169 to 3,601, against 3,398 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Paw Paw sits at 470.9/100K violent (grade F); the Michigan cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Paw Paw reported 16 violent crimes and 150 property crimes, for a total of 166 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Paw Paw's violent crime rate decreased by 23.5%, and the property crime rate decreased by 4.1%.
The most common crime type in Paw Paw is larceny-theft, accounting for 82.5% of all reported crimes (137 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Paw Paw 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 Paw Paw's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Paw Paw, MI rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Paw Paw, 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. Paw Paw is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,398 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.