Rock Falls, IL has a F safety grade (15/100) with a violent crime rate of 597 per 100,000, 70% above the national average.
Rock Falls is a small municipal reporter (8,545 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IL and U.S. context.
Rock Falls, IL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 70% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Rock Falls, IL shows violent crime at 596.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,972.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 70% 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.
The verdict
Rock Falls earns an F safety grade: violent crime runs 70% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Position in the state cohort
At 596.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Rock Falls ranks 19 of 506 — above 487 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +498.8% against the cohort median of 99.7. 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 369.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 596.8 in 2024 (+61.7%). The highest observed value was 596.8 in 2024 and the lowest 23.3 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 Rock Falls's 596.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Decatur (602.1), Eldorado (589.1), Paris (577.4), Granite City (617.8). 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 16.7% of the 305 Part I offenses reported in Rock Falls for 2024, against a median of 11.2% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 5.5 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 Rock Falls'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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 254 | 2972.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 188 | 2200.1 |
| Burglary | 46 | 538.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 20 | 234.1 |
| Arson | 1 | 11.7 |
| Violent Crime | 51 | 596.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 32 | 374.5 |
| Rape | 13 | 152.1 |
| Robbery | 5 | 58.5 |
| Murder | 1 | 11.7 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · fell across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 8,670 | 369.1 | 4406 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 8,577 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,687 | 506.5 | 2762.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 8,546 | 503.2 | 2328.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 8,545 | 596.8 | 2972.5 |
Rock Falls's crime figures on this page originate from Rock Falls Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 Illinois cities closest to Rock Falls in population. Their populations run from 8,336 to 8,710, against 8,545 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Illinois cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Rock Falls's 596.8/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Rock Falls 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 Rock Falls's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Rock Falls, IL 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. Rock Falls is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (8,545 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.