Selma, NC has a F safety grade (9/100) with a violent crime rate of 1049 per 100,000, 198% above the national average.
Selma is a small municipal reporter (7,244 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with NC and U.S. context.
Selma, NC carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 198% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Selma, NC shows violent crime at 1,049.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,388.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 198% 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.
The verdict
Selma earns an F safety grade: violent crime runs 198% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Position in the state cohort
At 1049.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Selma ranks 9 of 206 — above 197 of the 205 other North Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +298.2% against the cohort median of 263.5. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 651.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1049.1 in 2024 (+61.1%). The highest observed value was 1049.1 in 2024 and the lowest 496.4 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 30.5% of the 249 Part I offenses reported in Selma for 2024, against a median of 11.4% across comparable North Carolina cities — a gap of 19.1 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Selma's 1049.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Shelby (1044.1), Fairmont (1041.7), Goldsboro (1076.4), Roxboro (1007.9). 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 65.3% of reported property offenses in Selma, against a cohort median of 74.6%. The remainder is burglary (42) and motor vehicle theft (18). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Selma'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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 173 | 2388.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 113 | 1559.9 |
| Burglary | 42 | 579.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 18 | 248.5 |
| Arson | 1 | 13.8 |
| Violent Crime | 76 | 1049.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 65 | 897.3 |
| Robbery | 8 | 110.4 |
| Rape | 3 | 41.4 |
| 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 | 7,218 | 651.1 | 2784.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,454 | 496.4 | 2347.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,843 | 628.4 | 1636.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 7,042 | 653.2 | 2328.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 7,244 | 1049.1 | 2388.2 |
Selma's crime figures on this page originate from Selma 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 North Carolina cities closest to Selma in population. Their populations run from 6,903 to 8,031, against 7,244 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These North Carolina cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Selma's 1,049.1/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Selma 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 Selma's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Selma, NC 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. Selma is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (7,244 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.