Salem, IL has a C safety grade (52/100) with a violent crime rate of 386 per 100,000, 10% above the national average.
Salem is a small municipal reporter (6,988 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IL and U.S. context.
Salem, IL carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 10% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Salem, IL shows violent crime at 386.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,144.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 10% 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.
The verdict
Salem earns a C safety grade: violent crime runs 10% above the U.S. average, placing it higher-crime than most U.S. cities.
Based on 27 reported violent incidents in a population of 6,988. 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-count caution
Salem reported 27 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 6,988. 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 386.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Salem ranks 55 of 506 — above 451 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +287.7% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Salem's 386.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Cherry Valley (385.6), Herrin (387.6), Hoopeston (384.9), Moline (384.1). 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 25.2% of the 107 Part I offenses reported in Salem for 2024, against a median of 11.2% across comparable Illinois cities — a gap of 14.0 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 58.8% of reported property offenses in Salem, against a cohort median of 70.3%. The remainder is burglary (26) and motor vehicle theft (7). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 375.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 386.4 in 2024 (+2.9%). The highest observed value was 504.5 in 2022 and the lowest 202.8 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Salem'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.
Based on 27 reported violent incidents in a population of 6,988. 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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 80 | 1144.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 47 | 672.6 |
| Burglary | 26 | 372.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 7 | 100.2 |
| Arson | 3 | 42.9 |
| Violent Crime | 27 | 386.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 19 | 271.9 |
| Rape | 7 | 100.2 |
| Robbery | 1 | 14.3 |
| Murder | 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 | 6,921 | 375.7 | 4681.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,904 | 202.8 | 1462.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 7,136 | 504.5 | 1793.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,038 | 440.5 | 1690.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,988 | 386.4 | 1144.8 |
Salem's crime figures on this page originate from Salem 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 Salem in population. Their populations run from 6,876 to 7,211, against 6,988 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Illinois cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Salem's 386.4/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Salem 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 Salem's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Salem, 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. Salem is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,988 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.