Seaford, DE has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 1134 per 100,000, 222% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Seaford is a small municipal reporter (8,998 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with DE and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Seaford, DE is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 222% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Seaford, DE shows violent crime at 1,133.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 4,567.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 222% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 1133.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Seaford ranks 3 of 38 — above 35 of the 37 other Delaware cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +285.3% against the cohort median of 294.2. 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 Seaford's 1133.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Wilmington (1127.0), Dover (1012.8), Laurel (1451.2), Milford (791.3). 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 19.9% of the 513 Part I offenses reported in Seaford for 2024, against a median of 13.4% across comparable Delaware cities — a gap of 6.5 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 91.7% of reported property offenses in Seaford, against a cohort median of 80.7%. The remainder is burglary (15) and motor vehicle theft (19). 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 1080.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1133.6 in 2024 (+4.9%). The highest observed value was 1133.6 in 2024 and the lowest 1035.0 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Seaford'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.
Across 5.1 Census sq mi, Seaford logged 80.9 property and 20.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Seaford's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (73% of 513 offenses; mix index 5,678).
Violent offenses are 20% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Seaford offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.1 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 | 411 | 4567.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 377 | 4189.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 19 | 211.2 |
| Burglary | 15 | 166.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 102 | 1133.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 80 | 889.1 |
| Robbery | 17 | 188.9 |
| Rape | 5 | 55.6 |
| 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 | 8,145 | 1080.4 | 5451.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 8,392 | 1048.6 | 5052.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,526 | 1079.1 | 6450.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 8,792 | 1035 | 4185.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 8,998 | 1133.6 | 4567.7 |
Seaford Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Seaford's 513 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 Delaware cities closest to Seaford in population. Their populations run from 4,364 to 13,386, against 8,998 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Seaford sits at 1,133.6/100K violent (grade F); the Delaware cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Seaford reported 102 violent crimes and 411 property crimes, for a total of 513 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Seaford's violent crime rate increased by 9.5%, and the property crime rate increased by 9.1%.
The most common crime type in Seaford is larceny-theft, accounting for 73.5% of all reported crimes (377 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Seaford 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 Seaford's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Seaford, DE rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Seaford, DE FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Seaford is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (8,998 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.