South Bend, IN has a F safety grade (12/100) with a violent crime rate of 965 per 100,000, 174% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 103,415 residents, South Bend is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against IN and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
South Bend, IN carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 174% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, South Bend, IN shows violent crime at 965 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,044.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 174% 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 965.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, South Bend ranks 3 of 113 — above 110 of the 112 other Indiana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +521.5% against the cohort median of 155.3. 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 32.1% of the 3,112 Part I offenses reported in South Bend for 2024, against a median of 13.5% across comparable Indiana 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 Bend's 965.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Elkhart (995.2), Indianapolis (877.9), East Chicago (826.1), Hammond (741.3). 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 1734.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 965.0 in 2024 (-44.4%). The highest observed value was 1734.3 in 2020 and the lowest 571.9 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 67.5% of reported property offenses in South Bend, against a cohort median of 82.0%. The remainder is burglary (238) and motor vehicle theft (449). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate South Bend'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 41.9 Census sq mi, South Bend logged 50.5 property and 23.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
South Bend leans on larceny-theft at 46% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,153.
Violent offenses are 32% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
South Bend offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (41.9 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 | 2,114 | 2044.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,427 | 1379.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 449 | 434.2 |
| Burglary | 238 | 230.1 |
| Arson | 24 | 23.2 |
| Violent Crime | 998 | 965 |
| Aggravated Assault | 866 | 837.4 |
| Robbery | 70 | 67.7 |
| Rape | 59 | 57.1 |
| Murder | 3 | 2.9 |
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 | 102,119 | 1734.3 | 3723.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 101,936 | 571.9 | 1091.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 103,179 | 936.2 | 2307.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 102,999 | 1217.5 | 2557.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 103,415 | 965 | 2044.2 |
South Bend Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind South Bend's 3,112 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 Indiana cities closest to South Bend in population. Their populations run from 67,086 to 114,660, against 103,415 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
South Bend sits at 965/100K violent (grade F); the Indiana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
South Bend at 965/100K violent and 2,044.2/100K property - matched below outside Indiana (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
965/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,044.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-20.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, South Bend reported 998 violent crimes and 2,114 property crimes, for a total of 3,112 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, South Bend's violent crime rate decreased by 20.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 20.1%.
The most common crime type in South Bend is larceny-theft, accounting for 45.9% of all reported crimes (1,427 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: South Bend's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how South Bend's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 South Bend, IN 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. South Bend is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (103,415 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.