Rancho Santa Margarita, CA has a A safety grade (87/100) with a violent crime rate of 81 per 100,000, 77% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Rancho Santa Margarita (45,633 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Rancho Santa Margarita, CA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 77% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA shows violent crime at 81.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 523.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 77% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 39.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 81.1 in 2024 (+104.4%). The highest observed value was 81.1 in 2024 and the lowest 27.3 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 81.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Rancho Santa Margarita ranks 436 of 458 — above 22 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -75.7% against the cohort median of 333.1. 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 Rancho Santa Margarita's 81.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Lafayette (80.2), Diamond Bar (78.2), Irvine (84.0), Los Altos (77.8). 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 13.4% of the 276 Part I offenses reported in Rancho Santa Margarita for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 3.7 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.
Property counts dominate Rancho Santa Margarita'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 12.9 Census sq mi, Rancho Santa Margarita logged 18.5 property and 2.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Rancho Santa Margarita leans on larceny-theft at 58% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,900.
Violent offenses are only 13% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Rancho Santa Margarita offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (12.9 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 | 239 | 523.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 160 | 350.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 46 | 100.8 |
| Burglary | 33 | 72.3 |
| Arson | 1 | 2.2 |
| Violent Crime | 37 | 81.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 29 | 63.6 |
| Robbery | 8 | 17.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
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 | 47,894 | 39.7 | 588.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 47,539 | 27.3 | 323.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 46,889 | 38.4 | 477.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 46,157 | 54.2 | 452.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 45,633 | 81.1 | 523.7 |
Rancho Santa Margarita Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Rancho Santa Margarita's 276 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 California cities closest to Rancho Santa Margarita in population. Their populations run from 44,277 to 46,736, against 45,633 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Rancho Santa Margarita sits at 81.1/100K violent (grade A); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Rancho Santa Margarita at 81.1/100K violent and 523.7/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
81.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
523.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+49.6% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Rancho Santa Margarita reported 37 violent crimes and 239 property crimes, for a total of 276 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Rancho Santa Margarita's violent crime rate increased by 49.6%, and the property crime rate increased by 15.7%.
The most common crime type in Rancho Santa Margarita is larceny-theft, accounting for 58.0% of all reported crimes (160 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Rancho Santa Margarita 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 Rancho Santa Margarita's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 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. Rancho Santa Margarita is scored in the mid-size municipal band (45,633 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.