Sidney, MT has a C safety grade (48/100) with a violent crime rate of 464 per 100,000, 32% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Sidney is a small municipal reporter (6,031 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MT and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Sidney, MT carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 32% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sidney, MT shows violent crime at 464.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 696.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 32% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 40.0% of the 70 Part I offenses reported in Sidney for 2024, against a median of 19.0% across comparable Montana cities — a gap of 21.0 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.
Small-count caution
Sidney reported 28 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 6,031. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Sidney's 464.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Deer Lodge (461.7), Hot Springs (471.7), St. Ignatius (478.5), Wolf Point (484.1). 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 589.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 464.3 in 2024 (-21.2%). The highest observed value was 589.3 in 2020 and the lowest 464.3 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 69.0% of reported property offenses in Sidney, against a cohort median of 85.6%. 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 464.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sidney ranks 19 of 44 — above 25 of the 43 other Montana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +36.0% against the cohort median of 341.3. 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 Sidney'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 28 reported violent incidents in a population of 6,031. 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 3.3 Census sq mi, Sidney logged 12.8 property and 8.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Sidney leans on larceny-theft at 41% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,892.
Violent offenses are 40% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Sidney offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.3 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 | 42 | 696.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 29 | 480.8 |
| Burglary | 9 | 149.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4 | 66.3 |
| Arson | 1 | 16.6 |
| Violent Crime | 28 | 464.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 21 | 348.2 |
| Rape | 6 | 99.5 |
| Robbery | 1 | 16.6 |
| Murder | 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 | 6,279 | 589.3 | 1927.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,407 | 546.3 | 1123.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,066 | 478.1 | 1038.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,071 | 543.6 | 576.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,031 | 464.3 | 696.4 |
Sidney Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Sidney's 70 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 Montana cities closest to Sidney in population. Their populations run from 3,677 to 7,185, against 6,031 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Sidney sits at 464.3/100K violent (grade C); the Montana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Sidney reported 28 violent crimes and 42 property crimes, for a total of 70 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Sidney's violent crime rate decreased by 14.6%, and the property crime rate increased by 20.8%.
The most common crime type in Sidney is larceny-theft, accounting for 41.4% of all reported crimes (29 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Sidney 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 Sidney's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Sidney, MT 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. Sidney is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,031 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.