Scotts Valley, CA has a C safety grade (56/100) with a violent crime rate of 306 per 100,000, 13% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Scotts Valley (11,765 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
Scotts Valley, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 13% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Scotts Valley, CA shows violent crime at 306 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,598 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 13% below 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 135.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 306.0 in 2024 (+125.2%). The highest observed value was 306.0 in 2024 and the lowest 16.6 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 Scotts Valley's 306.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Mountain View (306.9), Orange Cove (306.9), Westmorland (304.6), Fortuna (302.9). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 93.1% of reported property offenses in Scotts Valley, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (9) and motor vehicle theft (4). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 306.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Scotts Valley ranks 245 of 458 — above 213 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -8.1% 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.
Property counts dominate Scotts Valley'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 4.6 Census sq mi, Scotts Valley logged 40.7 property and 7.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Scotts Valley's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (78% of 224 offenses; mix index 6,277).
Violent offenses are 16% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Scotts Valley offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.6 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 | 188 | 1598 |
| Larceny-Theft | 175 | 1487.5 |
| Burglary | 9 | 76.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4 | 34 |
| Arson | 2 | 17 |
| Violent Crime | 36 | 306 |
| Aggravated Assault | 27 | 229.5 |
| Rape | 5 | 42.5 |
| Robbery | 4 | 34 |
| 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 · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 11,777 | 135.9 | 1579.3 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 12,038 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 12,196 | 287 | 1393.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 11,993 | 141.7 | 1234.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 11,765 | 306 | 1598 |
Scotts Valley Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Scotts Valley's 224 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 Scotts Valley in population. Their populations run from 11,170 to 12,216, against 11,765 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Scotts Valley sits at 306/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Scotts Valley at 306/100K violent and 1,598/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
306/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,598/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Scotts Valley reported 36 violent crimes and 188 property crimes, for a total of 224 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Scotts Valley's violent crime rate increased by 115.9%, and the property crime rate increased by 29.5%.
The most common crime type in Scotts Valley is larceny-theft, accounting for 78.1% of all reported crimes (175 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Scotts Valley 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 Scotts Valley's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Scotts Valley, 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. Scotts Valley is scored in the mid-size municipal band (11,765 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.