Salem, NH has a B safety grade (72/100) with a violent crime rate of 106 per 100,000, 70% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Salem (31,962 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then NH and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Salem, NH carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 70% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Salem, NH shows violent crime at 106.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,968 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 70% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B 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 70.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 106.4 in 2024 (+51.7%). The highest observed value was 136.4 in 2023 and the lowest 51.2 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 Salem's 106.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Ossipee (108.0), Derry (108.2), Chesterfield (108.6), Epping (104.0). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 106.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Salem ranks 42 of 186 — above 144 of the 185 other New Hampshire cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +165.1% against the cohort median of 40.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 24.8 Census sq mi, Salem logged 25.3 property and 1.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Salem's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (88% of 663 offenses; mix index 7,741).
Violent offenses are only 5% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Salem offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (24.8 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 | 629 | 1968 |
| Larceny-Theft | 582 | 1820.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 27 | 84.5 |
| Burglary | 20 | 62.6 |
| Arson | 3 | 9.4 |
| Violent Crime | 34 | 106.4 |
| Robbery | 15 | 46.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 10 | 31.3 |
| Rape | 8 | 25 |
| Murder | 1 | 3.1 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 29,943 | 70.1 | 1112.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 31,231 | 51.2 | 1082.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 30,712 | 94.4 | 1422.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 30,796 | 136.4 | 1643.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 31,962 | 106.4 | 1968 |
Salem Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Salem's 663 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 New Hampshire cities closest to Salem in population. Their populations run from 22,969 to 34,207, against 31,962 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Salem sits at 106.4/100K violent (grade B); the New Hampshire cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Salem at 106.4/100K violent and 1,968/100K property - matched below outside New Hampshire (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
106.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,968/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-22% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Salem reported 34 violent crimes and 629 property crimes, for a total of 663 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Salem's violent crime rate decreased by 22%, and the property crime rate increased by 19.8%.
The most common crime type in Salem is larceny-theft, accounting for 87.8% of all reported crimes (582 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Salem 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 Salem's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Salem, NH 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 in the mid-size municipal band (31,962 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.