Sheldon, IA has a C safety grade (58/100) with a violent crime rate of 371 per 100,000, 5% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Sheldon is a small municipal reporter (5,396 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Sheldon, IA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 5% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sheldon, IA shows violent crime at 370.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 611.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 5% above 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.
Small-count caution
Sheldon reported 20 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,396. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 37.7% of the 53 Part I offenses reported in Sheldon for 2024, against a median of 15.8% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 21.9 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 370.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sheldon ranks 20 of 148 — above 128 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +159.7% against the cohort median of 142.7. 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 Sheldon's 370.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Atlantic (368.8), West Liberty (379.6), Clinton (359.9), Hiawatha (359.6). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 532.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 370.6 in 2024 (-30.4%). The highest observed value was 532.6 in 2020 and the lowest 257.0 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Sheldon'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.
Based on 20 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,396. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
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 4.8 Census sq mi, Sheldon logged 6.9 property and 4.2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Sheldon leans on larceny-theft at 49% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,571.
Violent offenses are 38% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Sheldon offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.8 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 | 33 | 611.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 26 | 481.8 |
| Burglary | 5 | 92.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 37.1 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 20 | 370.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 17 | 315 |
| Rape | 3 | 55.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,069 | 532.6 | 1006.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,058 | 257 | 949 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,385 | 334.3 | 817.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,447 | 459 | 899.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,396 | 370.6 | 611.6 |
Sheldon Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Sheldon's 53 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 Iowa cities closest to Sheldon in population. Their populations run from 5,218 to 5,557, against 5,396 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Sheldon sits at 370.6/100K violent (grade C); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Sheldon reported 20 violent crimes and 33 property crimes, for a total of 53 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Sheldon's violent crime rate decreased by 19.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 32%.
The most common crime type in Sheldon is larceny-theft, accounting for 49.1% of all reported crimes (26 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Sheldon 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 Sheldon's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Sheldon, IA 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. Sheldon is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,396 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.