Plainfield, NJ has a C safety grade (45/100) with a violent crime rate of 411 per 100,000, 17% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 55,975 residents, Plainfield is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against NJ and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Plainfield, NJ is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 17% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Plainfield, NJ shows violent crime at 410.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,609.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 17% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 410.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Plainfield ranks 21 of 417 — above 396 of the 416 other New Jersey cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +503.0% against the cohort median of 68.1. 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 Plainfield's 410.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Elizabeth (408.7), Pleasantville (402.5), Lindenwold (401.2), Perth Amboy (391.8). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 20.3% of the 1,131 Part I offenses reported in Plainfield for 2024, against a median of 7.1% across comparable New Jersey cities — a gap of 13.2 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 453.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 410.9 in 2024 (-9.3%). The highest observed value was 688.2 in 2021 and the lowest 410.9 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Plainfield'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 6 Census sq mi, Plainfield logged 151.2 property and 38.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Plainfield's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (67% of 1,131 offenses; mix index 4,755).
Violent offenses are 20% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Plainfield offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6 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 | 901 | 1609.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 753 | 1345.2 |
| Burglary | 76 | 135.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 72 | 128.6 |
| Arson | 1 | 1.8 |
| Violent Crime | 230 | 410.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 164 | 293 |
| Robbery | 58 | 103.6 |
| Rape | 8 | 14.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 50,333 | 453 | 1462.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 52,163 | 688.2 | 1397.5 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 55,494 | 452.3 | 1320.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 54,791 | 523.8 | 1684.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 55,975 | 410.9 | 1609.6 |
Plainfield Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Plainfield's 1,131 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the New Jersey cities closest to Plainfield in population. Their populations run from 53,295 to 59,532, against 55,975 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Plainfield sits at 410.9/100K violent (grade C); the New Jersey cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Plainfield at 410.9/100K violent and 1,609.6/100K property - matched below outside New Jersey (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
410.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,609.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-21.6% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Plainfield reported 230 violent crimes and 901 property crimes, for a total of 1,131 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Plainfield's violent crime rate decreased by 21.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 4.5%.
The most common crime type in Plainfield is larceny-theft, accounting for 66.6% of all reported crimes (753 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Plainfield'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 Plainfield's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Plainfield, NJ rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Plainfield, NJ 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. Plainfield is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (55,975 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.