Paynesville, MN has a A safety grade (83/100) with a violent crime rate of 153 per 100,000, 57% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Paynesville is a small municipal reporter (2,616 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MN and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Paynesville, MN carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 57% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Paynesville, MN shows violent crime at 152.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 152.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 57% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 50.0% of the 8 Part I offenses reported in Paynesville for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Minnesota cities — a gap of 39.4 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.
Small-count caution
Paynesville reported 4 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 2,616. 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 Paynesville's 152.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Bagley (152.6), Rochester (154.0), Northfield (151.7), Fulda (151.3). 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 152.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Paynesville ranks 90 of 276 — above 186 of the 275 other Minnesota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +56.3% against the cohort median of 97.8. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 100.0% of reported property offenses in Paynesville, against a cohort median of 85.6%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Paynesville's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 4 reported violent incidents in a population of 2,616. 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 2.3 Census sq mi, Paynesville logged 1.7 property and 1.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Paynesville's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (50% of 8 offenses; mix index 5,000).
Violent offenses are 50% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Paynesville offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.3 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 | 4 | 152.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 4 | 152.9 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 4 | 152.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 4 | 152.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 2,530 | 0 | 158.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,542 | 118 | 196.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,497 | 40 | 160.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,643 | 113.5 | 151.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,616 | 152.9 | 152.9 |
Paynesville Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Paynesville's 8 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 Minnesota cities closest to Paynesville in population. Their populations run from 2,487 to 2,711, against 2,616 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
In 2024, Paynesville reported 4 violent crimes and 4 property crimes, for a total of 8 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Paynesville's violent crime rate increased by 34.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 1.1%.
The most common crime type in Paynesville is larceny-theft, accounting for 50.0% of all reported crimes (4 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Paynesville 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 Paynesville's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Paynesville, MN 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. Paynesville is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (2,616 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.