Somerset, KY has a B safety grade (65/100) with a violent crime rate of 259 per 100,000, 26% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Somerset (12,367 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then KY and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Somerset, KY carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 26% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Somerset, KY shows violent crime at 258.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,075.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 26% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 258.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Somerset ranks 15 of 231 — above 216 of the 230 other Kentucky cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +289.7% against the cohort median of 66.4. 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 Somerset's 258.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Lexington (262.0), Smiths Grove (247.5), Paducah (270.4), Falmouth (271.5). 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 19.4% of the 165 Part I offenses reported in Somerset for 2024, against a median of 8.0% across comparable Kentucky cities — a gap of 11.4 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 206.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 258.8 in 2024 (+25.3%). The highest observed value was 283.5 in 2023 and the lowest 206.5 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 57.1% of reported property offenses in Somerset, against a cohort median of 72.3%. The remainder is burglary (41) and motor vehicle theft (16). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Somerset'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 14.8 Census sq mi, Somerset logged 9 property and 2.2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Somerset leans on larceny-theft at 46% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,990.
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Somerset offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (14.8 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 | 133 | 1075.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 76 | 614.5 |
| Burglary | 41 | 331.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 16 | 129.4 |
| Arson | 2 | 16.2 |
| Violent Crime | 32 | 258.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 18 | 145.5 |
| Rape | 8 | 64.7 |
| Robbery | 6 | 48.5 |
| 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 | 11,622 | 206.5 | 2228.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 11,889 | 210.3 | 2052.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 12,170 | 246.5 | 1963.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 12,345 | 283.5 | 2316.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 12,367 | 258.8 | 1075.4 |
Somerset Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Somerset's 165 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 Kentucky cities closest to Somerset in population. Their populations run from 10,537 to 13,917, against 12,367 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Somerset sits at 258.8/100K violent (grade B); the Kentucky cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Somerset at 258.8/100K violent and 1,075.4/100K property - matched below outside Kentucky (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
258.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,075.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Somerset reported 32 violent crimes and 133 property crimes, for a total of 165 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Somerset's violent crime rate decreased by 8.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 53.6%.
The most common crime type in Somerset is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.1% of all reported crimes (76 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Somerset figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Somerset's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Somerset, KY 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. Somerset is scored in the mid-size municipal band (12,367 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.