Shenandoah, IA has a D safety grade (30/100) with a violent crime rate of 657 per 100,000, 87% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Shenandoah is a small municipal reporter (4,872 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Shenandoah, IA carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 87% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Shenandoah, IA shows violent crime at 656.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 513.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 87% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D 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 271.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 656.8 in 2024 (+141.8%). The highest observed value was 656.8 in 2024 and the lowest 271.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 56.1% of the 57 Part I offenses reported in Shenandoah for 2024, against a median of 15.8% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 40.4 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 656.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Shenandoah ranks 4 of 148 — above 144 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +360.2% 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 Shenandoah's 656.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Sabula (612.2), Des Moines (703.0), Davenport (581.4), Albia (576.9). 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.
Shenandoah's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters 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 3.7 Census sq mi, Shenandoah logged 6.7 property and 8.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Shenandoah's 2024 book concentrates in aggravated assault (54% of 57 offenses; mix index 4,134).
Violent offenses are 56% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Shenandoah offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.7 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 32 | 656.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 31 | 636.3 |
| Rape | 1 | 20.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 25 | 513.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 19 | 390 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4 | 82.1 |
| Burglary | 2 | 41.1 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 4,786 | 271.6 | 710.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 4,749 | 315.9 | 1137.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,861 | 637.7 | 1069.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,872 | 369.5 | 697.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,872 | 656.8 | 513.1 |
Shenandoah Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Shenandoah's 57 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 Shenandoah in population. Their populations run from 4,555 to 5,158, against 4,872 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Shenandoah sits at 656.8/100K violent (grade D); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Shenandoah reported 32 violent crimes and 25 property crimes, for a total of 57 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Shenandoah's violent crime rate increased by 77.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 26.5%.
The most common crime type in Shenandoah is aggravated assault, accounting for 54.4% of all reported crimes (31 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Shenandoah 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 Shenandoah's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Shenandoah, 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. Shenandoah is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,872 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.