Santa Barbara, CA has a F safety grade (20/100) with a violent crime rate of 648 per 100,000, 84% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 85,758 residents, Santa Barbara is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against CA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Santa Barbara, CA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 84% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Santa Barbara, CA shows violent crime at 648.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,809.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 84% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 424.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 648.3 in 2024 (+52.8%). The highest observed value was 648.3 in 2024 and the lowest 424.2 in 2020. 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 Santa Barbara's 648.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Redding (647.8), Montclair (644.1), Cudahy (654.2), Rialto (641.7). 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 648.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Santa Barbara ranks 70 of 458 — above 388 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +97.4% against the cohort median of 328.5. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.4% of the 2,108 Part I offenses reported in Santa Barbara for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 9.3 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 79.6% of reported property offenses in Santa Barbara, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (146) and motor vehicle theft (170). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Santa Barbara'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 19.5 Census sq mi, Santa Barbara logged 79.6 property and 28.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Santa Barbara leans on larceny-theft at 59% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,971.
Violent offenses are 26% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Santa Barbara offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (19.5 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 | 1,552 | 1809.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,236 | 1441.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 170 | 198.2 |
| Burglary | 146 | 170.2 |
| Arson | 10 | 11.7 |
| Violent Crime | 556 | 648.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 421 | 490.9 |
| Rape | 71 | 82.8 |
| Robbery | 64 | 74.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 91,692 | 424.2 | 2404.8 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 90,428 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 87,817 | 455.5 | 2097.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 86,967 | 607.1 | 1855.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 85,758 | 648.3 | 1809.7 |
Santa Barbara Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Santa Barbara's 2,108 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
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 Santa Barbara in population. Their populations run from 83,186 to 88,026, against 85,758 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Santa Barbara sits at 648.3/100K violent (grade F); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Santa Barbara at 648.3/100K violent and 1,809.7/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
648.3/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,809.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+6.8% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Santa Barbara reported 556 violent crimes and 1,552 property crimes, for a total of 2,108 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Santa Barbara's violent crime rate increased by 6.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 2.5%.
The most common crime type in Santa Barbara is larceny-theft, accounting for 58.6% of all reported crimes (1,236 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Santa Barbara'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 Santa Barbara's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Santa Barbara, 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. Santa Barbara is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (85,758 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.