Perry, IA has a C safety grade (55/100) with a violent crime rate of 399 per 100,000, 13% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Perry is a small municipal reporter (8,022 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Perry, IA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 13% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Perry, IA shows violent crime at 398.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 585.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 13% above 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 40.5% of the 79 Part I offenses reported in Perry for 2024, against a median of 15.8% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 24.7 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 398.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Perry ranks 15 of 148 — above 133 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +179.5% against the cohort median of 142.7. 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 260.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 398.9 in 2024 (+53.0%). The highest observed value was 463.3 in 2022 and the lowest 189.6 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Perry's 398.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Ottumwa (397.1), Dubuque (400.9), Newton (384.3), Burlington (413.8). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 61.7% of reported property offenses in Perry, against a cohort median of 76.8%. The remainder is burglary (12) and motor vehicle theft (6). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Perry'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.
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 5.8 Census sq mi, Perry logged 8.1 property and 5.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Perry leans on larceny-theft at 37% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,745.
Violent offenses are 41% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Perry offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.8 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 | 47 | 585.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 29 | 361.5 |
| Burglary | 12 | 149.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 6 | 74.8 |
| Arson | 2 | 24.9 |
| Violent Crime | 32 | 398.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 26 | 324.1 |
| Murder | 2 | 24.9 |
| Rape | 2 | 24.9 |
| Robbery | 2 | 24.9 |
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 | 7,669 | 260.8 | 1577.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,912 | 189.6 | 1162.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,986 | 463.3 | 713.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 8,078 | 247.6 | 990.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 8,022 | 398.9 | 585.9 |
Perry Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Perry's 79 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 Iowa cities closest to Perry in population. Their populations run from 7,345 to 8,643, against 8,022 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Perry sits at 398.9/100K violent (grade C); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Perry reported 32 violent crimes and 47 property crimes, for a total of 79 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Perry's violent crime rate increased by 61.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 40.8%.
The most common crime type in Perry is larceny-theft, accounting for 36.7% of all reported crimes (29 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Perry 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 Perry's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Perry, IA 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. Perry is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (8,022 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.