South Houston, TX has a F safety grade (12/100) with a violent crime rate of 694 per 100,000, 97% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
South Houston (15,696 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TX and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
South Houston, TX is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 97% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, South Houston, TX shows violent crime at 694.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,178.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 97% 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 694.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, South Houston ranks 28 of 686 — above 658 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +288.1% against the cohort median of 178.9. 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 South Houston's 694.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Amarillo (690.5), Pecos (699.1), Daingerfield (680.3), Port Arthur (718.5). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 537.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 694.4 in 2024 (+29.2%). The highest observed value was 694.4 in 2024 and the lowest 537.6 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 24.2% of the 451 Part I offenses reported in South Houston for 2024, against a median of 14.3% across comparable Texas cities — a gap of 9.9 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 58.8% of reported property offenses in South Houston, against a cohort median of 71.6%. The remainder is burglary (43) and motor vehicle theft (98). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate South Houston'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 3 Census sq mi, South Houston logged 112.3 property and 35.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
South Houston leans on larceny-theft at 45% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,824.
Violent offenses are 24% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
South Houston offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (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 | 342 | 2178.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 201 | 1280.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 98 | 624.4 |
| Burglary | 43 | 274 |
| Arson | 2 | 12.7 |
| Violent Crime | 109 | 694.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 69 | 439.6 |
| Robbery | 25 | 159.3 |
| Rape | 14 | 89.2 |
| Murder | 1 | 6.4 |
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 | 17,485 | 537.6 | 2859.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 17,490 | 571.8 | 2018.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 15,613 | 634.1 | 3202.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 15,718 | 559.9 | 2659.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 15,696 | 694.4 | 2178.9 |
South Houston Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind South Houston's 451 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 Texas cities closest to South Houston in population. Their populations run from 15,320 to 16,076, against 15,696 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
South Houston sits at 694.4/100K violent (grade F); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
South Houston at 694.4/100K violent and 2,178.9/100K property - matched below outside Texas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
694.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,178.9/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, South Houston reported 109 violent crimes and 342 property crimes, for a total of 451 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, South Houston's violent crime rate increased by 24%, and the property crime rate decreased by 18.1%.
The most common crime type in South Houston is larceny-theft, accounting for 44.6% of all reported crimes (201 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: South Houston 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 South Houston's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 South Houston, TX rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the South Houston, TX 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 Houston is scored in the mid-size municipal band (15,696 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.