South Bay, FL has a F safety grade (11/100) with a violent crime rate of 1002 per 100,000, 185% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
South Bay is a small municipal reporter (4,891 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with FL and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
South Bay, FL is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 185% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, South Bay, FL shows violent crime at 1,001.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,146.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 185% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 1001.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, South Bay ranks 6 of 126 — above 120 of the 125 other Florida cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +419.9% against the cohort median of 192.7. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 31.8% of the 154 Part I offenses reported in South Bay for 2024, against a median of 13.3% across comparable Florida cities — a gap of 18.6 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 South Bay's 1001.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Mangonia Park (943.7), Riviera Beach (943.1), Cocoa (1082.3), Pahokee (1131.7). 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 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 668.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1001.8 in 2024 (+49.9%). The highest observed value was 1001.8 in 2024 and the lowest 668.3 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate South Bay'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.
Across 2.9 Census sq mi, South Bay logged 36.7 property and 17.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
South Bay leans on larceny-theft at 57% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,998.
Violent offenses are 32% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
South Bay offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.9 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 | 105 | 2146.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 88 | 1799.2 |
| Burglary | 12 | 245.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5 | 102.2 |
| Arson | 1 | 20.4 |
| Violent Crime | 49 | 1001.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 39 | 797.4 |
| Rape | 6 | 122.7 |
| Robbery | 3 | 61.3 |
| Murder | 1 | 20.4 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,237 | 668.3 | 1584.9 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 5,222 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,453 | 965.6 | 1437.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,897 | 980.2 | 2348.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,891 | 1001.8 | 2146.8 |
South Bay Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind South Bay's 154 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Florida cities closest to South Bay in population. Their populations run from 4,036 to 5,610, against 4,891 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
South Bay sits at 1,001.8/100K violent (grade F); the Florida cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, South Bay reported 49 violent crimes and 105 property crimes, for a total of 154 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, South Bay's violent crime rate increased by 2.2%, and the property crime rate decreased by 8.6%.
The most common crime type in South Bay is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.1% of all reported crimes (88 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: South Bay 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 South Bay's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 South Bay, FL rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the South Bay, FL FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. South Bay is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,891 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.